Accumulation  The desire to accumulate is the desire to be secure, certain

There can be freedom from knowledge only when the process of gathering, the motive of accumulation, is understood. The desire to store up is the desire to be secure, to be certain. This desire for certainty through identification, through condemnation and justification, is the cause of fear, which destroys all communion. (COL, 1, 26-7.)

Acquisition  See also Attachments, Becoming

The search after ever wider gratification is without end, and so there is no end to conflict, antagonism, and hence no happiness. (COL, 2, 36.)

Our acquisitions are a means of covering up our own emptiness; our minds are like hollow drums, beaten upon by every passing hand and making a lot of noise. (COL, 2, 37.)

The mind is not quiet when it is acquiring or becoming. All acquisition is conflict; all becoming is a process of isolation. The mind is not quiet when it is disciplined, controlled and checked; such a mind is a dead mind, it is isolating itself through various forms of resistance, and so it inevitably creates misery for itself and for others.
The mind is quiet only when it is not caught in thought, which is the net of its own activity. When the mind is still, not made still, a true factor, love, comes into being. (COL, 2, 32.)

Freedom cannot be acquired. If you acquire it, you will soon be bored with it. Does not acquisition dull the mind? Acquisition, positive or negative, is a burden. As soon as you acquire, you lose interest. In trying to possess, you are alert, interested; but possession is boredom. You may want to possess more, but the pursuit of more is only a movement towards boredom. You try various forms of acquisition, and as long as there is the effort to acquire, there is interest; but there is always an end to acquisition, and so there is always boredom. (COL, 2, 22-3.)

Action

As long as action is the outcome of desire, of memory, of fear, of pleasure and pain, it must inevitably breed conflict, confusion, and antagonism. Our action is the outcome of our conditioning, at whatever level; and our response to challenge, being inadequate and incomplete, must produce conflict, which is the problem. (COL, 1, 124-5.)

Ambition  See Becoming

Analysis

The analyzer, though he may separate himself from it, is part of the analyzed; and as he is conditioned by the thing he analyzes, he cannot free himself from it. Again, the truth of this must be seen. It is truth that liberates, not will and effort. (COL, 1, 125.)

Attachments  Without attachments, the self is not  See also Acquisition

We are the things we possess, we are that to which we are attached. Attachment has nobility. Attachment to knowledge is not different from any other gratifying addiction. Attachment is self-absorption, whether at the lowest or the highest level. Attachment is self-deception, it is an escape from the hollowness of the self. The things to which we are attached  property, people, ideas  become all-important, for without the many things which fill its emptiness, the self is not. The fear of not being makes for possession; and fear breeds illusion. (COL, 1, 113.)

Ownership denies love, does it not? To own is to be secure; possession is defence, making oneself invulnerable. (COL, 1, 12.)

The rich have a peculiar atmosphere of their own. However cultured, unobtrusive, ancient and polished, the rich have an impenetrable and assured aloofness, that inviolable certainty and hardness that is difficult to break down. ... Their god is the god of their gold. .. For the rich as for the poor, it is extremely difficult to find reality. (COL, 1, 21-2.)

How difficult it is for the man of possessions to be free! It is a great hardship for a rich man to put aside his wealth. (COL, 1, 230.)

Becoming  See also The Future

How strong is our will to succeed, to become. (COL, 1, 20.)

As long as you want to become something, at whatever level, there is bound to be misery and confusion. (COL, 1, 67.)

The mind is not quiet when it is acquiring or becoming. All acquisition is conflict; all becoming is a process of isolation. ... Such a mind is a dead mind, it is isolating itself through various forms of resistance, and so it inevitably creates misery for itself and for others. (COL, 2, 32.)

The mind is never quiet if it is always acquiring and calculating; and must not the mind be still for truth to be? (COL, 2, 125.)

Self-expansion in any form, whether through wealth or through virtue, is a process of conflict, causing antagonism and confusion. A mind burdened with becoming can never be tranquil, for tranquillity is not a result either of practice or of time. Tranquillity is a state of understanding, and becoming denies this understanding. Becoming creates the sense of time, which is really the postponement of understanding. The "I shall be" is an illusion born of self-importance. (COL, 1, 22.)

Ambition in any form -- for the group, for individual salvation, or for spiritual achievement is action postponed. Desire is ever of the future; the desire to become is inaction in the present. The now has greater significance than the tomorrow. In the now is all time, and to understand the now is to be free of time. Becoming is the continuance of time, or sorrow. Becoming does not contain being. Being is always in the present, and being is the highest form of transformation. Becoming is merely modified continuity, and there is radical transformation only in the present, in being. (COL, 1, 11.)

Belief

Experience is shaped by belief. Belief in a particular pattern of action, or in an ideology, does produce what is longed for; but at what cost and at what suffering! For most of us, belief has greater meaning than actuality. The understanding of what is does not require belief; on the contrary, belief, idea, prejudice, is a definite hindrance to understanding. But we prefer our beliefs, our dogmas; they warm us, they promise, they encourage. If we understood the way of our beliefs and why we cling to them, one of the major causes of antagonism would disappear. (COL, 1, 73.)

Belief conditions experience, and experience then strengthens belief. What you believe, you experience. ... Belief is another cloak of desire. Knowledge, belief, conviction, conclusion and experience are hindrances to truth; they are the very structure of the self. ... The unknown can never be experienced by the known; the known, the experienced must cease for the unknown to be. (COL, 1, 89.)

Does belief bring clarity? Does the tightly enclosing wall of belief bring understanding? What is the necessity of beliefs, and do they not darken the already crowded mind? The understanding of what is does not demand beliefs, but direct perception, which is to be directly aware without the interference of desire. It is desire that makes for confusion, and belief is the extension of desire. (COL, 1, 56.)

You can be converted from one belief to another, from one dogma to another, but you cannot be converted to the understanding of reality. Belief is not reality. You can change your mind, your opinion, but truth or God is not a conviction; it is an experience not based on any belief or dogma, or on any previous experience. (COL, 1, 23.)

Cause and Effect

Our motive in searching for the cause is the desire to be rid of the effect. This desire is another form of resistance or condemnation; and when there is condemnation, there is no understanding. (COL, 1, 114.)

Change

Change is merely modified continuity. (COL, I, 15.)

Choicelessness  See also Passive Awareness

To give up in order to gain is no renunciation at all. (COL, 3, 4.)

Awareness, without any choice, of the ways of the mind, is the beginning of meditation. (COL, 1, 84.)

To be extensively aware, there must be no condemnation or justification of the problem; awareness must be choiceless. To be so aware demands wide patience and sensitivity; it requires eagerness and sustained attention so that the whole process of thinking can be observed and understood. (COL, 1, 115-6.)

Communion  See also Relationship  Is communion

There is understanding only when there is communion, and communion is impossible as long as there is resistance or contention, fear or acceptance. (COL, 1, 99.)

To commune there must be relationship. (COL, 1, 133.)

Isolation is the outcome of fear, and fear puts an end to all communion. Communion is relationship; and however pleasurable or painful relationship may be, it is there that there is the possibility of self-forgetfulness. Isolation is the way of the self, and all activity of the self brings conflict and sorrow. (COL, 1, 78.)

Communion can exist only where there is no fear; and there is gnawing fear and pain where there is usage and so dependence. As nothing can live in isolation, the attempts of the mind to isolate itself lead to its own frustration and misery. To escape from this sense of incompleteness, we seek completeness in ideas, in people, in things; and so we are back again where we started, in the search for substitutes. (COL, 1, 101.)

The Conclusion  See The Ideal, Pattern, or Conclusion

Conditioning  Shapes our understanding

The experience of pleasure and pain is direct, individual; but the understanding of the experience is after the pattern of others, of the religious and social authorities. We are the result of the thoughts and influences of others; we are conditioned by religious as well as political propaganda. (COL, 1, 61-2.)

Conflict  Is the very structure of the self

Conflict is the very structure of the self. It is entirely possible to live without conflict, the conflict of greed, of fear, of success; but this possibility will be merely theoretical and not actual until it is discovered through direct experiencing. To exist without greed is possible only when the ways of the self are understood. (COL, 1, 124.)

Conflict  Desire for sensations causes conflict

The mind is not quiet when it is acquiring or becoming. All acquisition is conflict; all becoming is a process of isolation. (COL, 2, 32.)

Conflict exists when desire assumes the form of the experiencer and pursues that which is to be experienced; for that which is to be experienced is also put together by desire. (COL, 3, 36.)

Conflict comes with craving, with the desire to continue, to become more  which does not mean that there must be stagnating contentment. More is the constant cry of the self; it is the craving for sensation, whether of the past or of the future. Sensation is of the mind, and so the mind is not the instrument for the understanding of conflict. (COL, 1, 108-9.)

Our problem is to see the nature of desire, and not merely to overcome conflict; for it is desire that causes conflict. Desire is stimulated by association and remembrance; memory is part of desire. The recollection of the pleasant and the unpleasant nourishes desire and breaks it up into opposing and conflicting desires. The mind identifies itself with the pleasant as opposed to the unpleasant; through the choice of pain and pleasure the mind separates desire, dividing it into different categories of pursuits and values. (COL, 2, 119.)

Desire can and does divide itself into pleasure and pain, wisdom and ignorance; one desire opposes another, the more profitable conflicts with the less profitable, and so on. (COL, 2, 117.)

There is no escape from conflict through any of the opposites of desire, for desire itself breeds its own opposition. (COL, 2, 120.)

Conflict is inherent in sensation. As long as I want to be powerful or humble, there must be the conflicts of sensation, which bring about private and social misery. (COL, 1, 76.)

The positive or negative action of will, which is desire sharpened and heightened, always leads to strife and conflict; it is not the means of understanding. (COL, 1, 67.)

The phenomenon of the observer and the observed is not a dual process, but a single one; and only in experiencing the fact of this unitary process is there freedom from desire, from conflict. The question of how to experience this fact should never arise. It must happen; and it happens only when there is alertness and passive awareness. (COL, 1, 61.)

Conformity

All activities of conformity and denial, of analysis and acceptance, ... strengthen the experiencer. (COL, 1, 38.)

Consciousness - Is our being

Consciousness is not of one particular level, it is the totality of our being. (COL, 2, 166.)

Consciousness - Everyday consciousness is of time

Consciousness as we know it is of time, it is a process of recording and storing experience at its different levels. Whatever takes place within this consciousness is its own projection; it has its own quality, and is measurable. (COL, 1, 40.)

Consciousness  The breaking down of the experiencer cannot be done consciously

To be conscious of being free is not freedom. Consciousness is the experiencing of freedom or bondage, and that consciousness is the experiencer, the maker of effort. ... The breaking down of the experiencer ... cannot be done consciously. (COL, 2, 166.)

Consistency

To be consistent is to be thoughtless. It is easier and safer to follow a pattern of conduct without deviation, to conform to an ideology or a tradition, than to risk the pain of thought. To obey authority, inner or outer, needs no questioning; it obviates thought, with its anxieties and disturbances. To follow our own conclusions, experiences, determinations, creates no contradictions within us, we are being consistent to our own purpose; we choose a particular path and follow it, unyielding and determined. Do not most of us seek a way of life which is not too disturbing, in which at least there is psychological security? (COL, 1, 106.)

The desire to be consistent gives a peculiar strength and satisfaction, for in sincerity there is security. But sincerity is not simplicity, and without simplicity there can be no understanding. Consistency offers safety and certainty and that is why we cling to it with desperation. (COL, 1, 107.)

Continuity  See Safety, Security, Permanence

Contradiction/Synthesis  See also Disintegration/Integration

The conflict within him [i.e., the listener] will now be greater than ever; for when once you are aware of what is, however reluctantly, and deny it because of your commitments, deep contradiction is set going. This contradiction is duality. There can be no bridging over of opposing desires; and if a bridge is created, it is resistance, which is consistency. Only in understanding what is is there freedom from what is. (COL, 1, 119.)

The self, in its very structure, is contradictory; it is made up of many entities with different masks, each in opposition to the others. The whole fabric of the self is the result of contradictory interests and values, of many varying desires at different levels of its being; and these desires all beget their own opposites. The self, the me, is a network of complex desires, each desire having its own impetus and aim, often in opposition to other hopes and pursuits. These masks are taken on according to stimulating circumstances and sensations; so within the structure of the self, contradiction is inevitable. This contradiction within us breeds illusion and pain, and to escape from it we resort to all manner of self-deceptions which only increase our conflict and misery. When the inner contradiction becomes unbearable, consciously or unconsciously we try to escape through death, through insanity; or we give ourselves over to an idea, to a group, to a country, to some activity that will completely absorb our being; or we turn to organized religion, with its dogmas and rituals. So this split in ourselves leads either to further self-expansion or to self-destruction, insanity. Trying to be other than what we are cultivates contradiction; the fear of what is breeds the illusion of its opposite, and in the pursuit of the opposite we hope to escape from fear. Synthesis is not the cultivation of the opposite; synthesis does not come about through opposition, for all opposites contain the elements of their own opposites. The one-pointed pursuit of a single desire, of a particular interest, leads to self-enclosing opposition. Contradiction within brings conflict without, and conflict indicates contradiction. Only through understanding the ways of desire is there freedom from self-contradiction. (COL, 1, 107.)

Only a dead thing can be forced to conform to a pattern; and as life is in constant movement, there is contradiction the moment we try to fit life into a fixed pattern or conclusion. Conformity to a pattern is the disintegration of the individual . The ideal is not superior to life, and when we make it so there is confusion, antagonism and misery. (COL, 1, 130.)

The idea is more important to us than the fact; the concept of what one should be has more significance than what one is. ... The image, the symbol, is of greater worth than the actual; and on the actual we try to superimpose the idea, the pattern. So we create a contradiction between what is and what should be. ... (COL, 1, 85-6.)

Trying to be other than what we are cultivates contradiction; the fear of what is breeds the illusion of its opposite, and in the pursuit of the opposite we hope to escape from fear. Synthesis is not the cultivation of the opposite; synthesis does not come about through opposition, for all opposites contain the elements of their own opposites. The one-pointed pursuit of a single desire, of a particular interest, leads to self-enclosing opposition. Contradiction within brings conflict without, and conflict indicates contradiction. Only through understanding the ways of desire is there freedom from self-contradiction. (COL, 1, 107.)

Cunning

Conclusions, material or ideational, prevent the fruition of intelligence, the freedom in which alone reality can come into being; and without this freedom, cunning is taken for intelligence. The ways of cunning are always complex and destructive. It is this self-protective cunning that makes for attachment; and when attachment causes pain, it is this same cunning that seeks detachment and finds pleasure in the pride and vanity of renunciation. The understanding of the ways of cunning, the ways of the self, is the beginning of intelligence. (COL, 1, 113.)

Dependence

Dependence breeds possessiveness, envy, fear; and then fear and the overcoming of it become your anxious problem. In the search for happiness, we create problems and in them we get caught. (COL, 1, 100.)

Desire  Understand its nature and its ways

It is essential to understand desire. (COL, 2, 117.)

Our problem is to see the nature of desire, and not merely to overcome conflict; for it is desire that causes conflict. (COL, 2, 119.)

The craving for more is the beginning of conflict and misery. We try to escape from this misery through every form of self-deception, through suppression, substitution and sublimation; but craving continues, perhaps at a different level. Craving at any level is still conflict and pain. (COL, 1, 73.)

Desire is ever seeking fulfilment, attainment, and it is this movement of desire which must be understood and not driven away or under. Without understanding the ways of desire, mere control of thought has little significance. (COL, 2, 230.)

The understanding of what is does not demand beliefs, but direct perception, which is to be directly aware without the interference of desire. (COL, 1, 56.)

Awareness of the ways of desire is self-knowledge. (COL, 2, 67.)

To see the false as the false, and the truth in the false, and the true as the true, is not easy. To perceive clearly, there must be freedom from desire, which twists and conditions the mind. (COL, 2, 125.)

Desire  Desire creates the experiencer

The desire to experience creates the experiencer, who then accumulates and remembers. Desire makes for the separation of the thinker from his thoughts; the desire to become, to experience, to be more or to be less, makes for division between the experiencer and the experience. (COL, 2, 66-7.)

Conflict exists when desire assumes the form of the experiencer and pursues that which is to be experienced; for that which is to be experienced is also put together by desire. (COL, 3, 36.)

The all-conquering desire for the ultimate, or the will to reach that which is nameless, is still the way of consciousness, or the experiencer of good and bad, the experiencer who is waiting, watching, hoping. (COL, 2, 166.)

It is desire that makes for confusion, and belief is the extension of desire. (COL, 1, 56.)

The positive or negative action of will, which is desire sharpened and heightened, always leads to strife and conflict; it is not the means of understanding. (COL, 1, 67.)

Desire  Is ever of attainment, becoming, the future

Desire is ever seeking fulfilment, attainment. (COL, 2, 230.)

Desire is ever of the future; the desire to become is inaction in the present. The now has greater significance than the tomorrow. In the now is all time, and to understand the now is to be free of time. Becoming is the continuance of time, or sorrow. Becoming does not contain being. Being is always in the present, and being is the highest form of transformation. Becoming is merely modified continuity, and there is radical transformation only in the present, in being. (COL, 1, 11.)

The demand for the cessation of the 'I' becomes the new activity of the 'I'; but it is not new, it is merely another form of desire. (COL, 2, 117.)

You struggle after the final end, and another pursues worldly things; your effort may be more ennobling, but it is still the desire to gain, is it not? (COL, 2, 114.)

Desire  The ongoing fulfillment of desire perpetuates the self

Is there self-fulfilment? The object of fulfillment is ever self-projected, self-chosen, so this craving to fulfil is a form of self-perpetuation. The search for self-fulfilment is the search for the permanency of desire. Desire is ever transient, it has no fixed abode; it may perpetuate for a time the object to which it clings, but desire in itself has no permanency. We are instinctively aware of this, and so we try to make permanent the idea, the belief, the thing, the relationship; but as this is also impossible, there is the creation of the experiencer as a permanent essence, the I separate and different from desire, the thinker separate and different from his thoughts. This separation is obviously false, leading to illusion. (COL, 1, 86-7.)

Desire  Nourishes itself on association, memory, the past

Desire is stimulated by association and remembrance; memory is part of desire. The recollection of the pleasant and the unpleasant nourishes desire and breaks it up into opposing and conflicting desires. The mind identifies itself with the pleasant as opposed to the unpleasant; through the choice of pain and pleasure the mind separates desire, dividing it into different categories of pursuits and values. (COL, 2, 119.)

These many urges go to make up the 'I,' with its memories, anxieties, fears, and so on, and the entire activity of this 'I' is within the field of desire; it has no other field of activity. (COL, 2, 117.)

Desire  Desire is not dualistic

The dualism of desire, which the mind has brought about, is an illusion. There is no dualism in desire, but merely different types of desire. There is dualism only between time and eternity. Our concern is to see the unreality of the dualism of desire. Desire does divide itself into want and not-want, but the avoidance of the one and the pursuit of the other is still desire. (COL, 2, 120.)

Desire can and does divide itself into pleasure and pain, wisdom and ignorance; one desire opposes another, the more profitable conflicts with the less profitable, and so on. Though for various reasons it may separate itself, desire is in fact an indivisible process. (COL, 2, 117.)

One desire can be overcome by a greater desire, and that desire by still another, and so on endlessly. (COL, 2, 166.)

Desire may break itself up into many opposing and conflicting urges, but it is still desire. (COL, 2, 117.)

Desire  Silence comes with the absence or purgation of desire

To perceive clearly, there must be freedom from desire, which twists and conditions the mind. (COL, 2, 125.)

The desire to be integrated is not different from any other desire, and all desire is a cause of conflict. When there is no conflict, there is integration.

The deliberate cultivation of silence is as the enjoyment of some longed-for pleasure; the desire to silence the mind is but the pursuit of sensation. Such silence is only a form of resistance, an isolation which leads to decay. Silence that is bought is a thing of the market in which there is the noise of activity. Silence comes with the absence of desire. (COL, 2, 77.)

There is freedom when the entire being, the superficial as well as the hidden, is purged of the past. (COL, 1, 69.)

The purgation of the mind must take place not only on its upper levels, but also in its hidden depths; and this can happen only when the naming or terming process comes to an end. Naming only strengthens and gives continuity to the experiencer, to the desire for permanency, to the characteristic of particularizing memory. There must be silent awareness of naming, and so the understanding of it. (COL, 1, 69.)

The upper and the deeper mind are not dissimilar; they are both made up of conclusions, memories, they are both the outcome of the past. They can supply an answer, a conclusion, but they are incapable of dissolving the problem. The problem is dissolved only when both the upper and the deeper mind are silent, when they are not projecting positive or negative conclusions. There is freedom from the problem only when the whole mind is utterly still, choicelessly aware of the problem; for only then the maker of the problem is not. (COL, 1, 137.)

"Sir, you are taking everything away from one, and nothing is left. But that may be the new thing." It is. (COL, 3, 88.)

Devotion

When the [devotional] song is real there is neither you nor I, but only the silence of the eternal. The song is not the sound but the silence. Do not let the sound of your song fill your heart. (COL, 2, 41.)

Discovery of the ways of the self  Brings joy

Only in discovery can there be joy -- the discovery from moment to moment of the ways of the self. (COL, 1, 68.)

Truth or happiness cannot come without undertaking the journey into the ways of the self. (COL, 1, 13.)

A well-disciplined mind is not a free mind, and it is only in freedom that any discovery can be made. There must be spontaneity to uncover the movements of the self, at whatever level it may be placed. Though there may be unpleasant discoveries, the movements of the self must be exposed and understood; but disciplines destroy the spontaneity in which discoveries are made. Disciplines, however exacting, fix the mind in a pattern. The mind will adjust itself to that for which it has been trained; but that to which it adjusts itself is not the real. Disciplines are mere impositions and so can never be the means of denudation. Through self-discipline the mind can strengthen itself in its purpose; but this purpose is self-projected and so it is not the real. The mind creates reality in its own image, and disciplines merely give vitality to that image. (COL, 1, 67-8.)

Wisdom is the understanding of what is from moment to moment, without the accumulation of experience and knowledge. What is accumulated does not give freedom to understand, and without freedom there is no discovery; and it is this endless discovery that makes for wisdom. Wisdom is ever new, ever fresh, and there is no means of gathering it. The means destroys the freshness, the newness, the spontaneous discovery. (COL, 1, 96.)

There is no path to truth. Trust must be discovered, but there is no formula for its discovery. What is formulated is not true. You must set out on the uncharted sea, and the uncharted sea is yourself. You must set out to discover yourself, but not according to any plan or pattern, for then there is no discovery. Discovery brings joy  not the remembered, comparative joy, but joy that is ever new. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom in whose tranquility and silence there is the immeasurable. (COL, 1, 97.)

Discipline  Mind control is not important

The control of the mind is not important; what is important is to find out the interests of the mind. The mind is a bundle of conflicting interests, and merely to strengthen one interest against another is what we call concentration, the process of discipline. Discipline is the cultivation of resistance, and where there is resistance there is no understanding. A well-disciplined mind is not a free mind, and it is only in freedom that any discovery can be made. There must be spontaneity to uncover the movements of the self, at whatever level it may be placed. Though there may be unpleasant discoveries, the movements of the self must be exposed and understood; but disciplines destroy the spontaneity in which discoveries are made. Disciplines, however exacting, fix the mind in a pattern. The mind will adjust itself to that for which it has been trained; but that to which it adjusts itself is not the real. Disciplines are mere impositions and so can never be the means of denudation. Through self-discipline the mind can strengthen itself in its purpose; but this purpose is self-projected and and so it is not the real. The mind creates reality in its own image, and disciplines merely give vitality to that image. (COL, 1, 67-8.)

Disintegration/Integration  See Integration/Disintegration

Distraction

To understand what is, there must be freedom from all distraction. Distraction is the condemnation or justification of what is. Distraction is comparison; it is resistance or discipline against the actual. Distraction is the very effort or compulsion to understand. All distractions are a hindrance to the swift pursuit of what is. What is is not static; it is in constant movement, and to follow it the mind must not be tethered to any belief, to any hope of success or fear of failure. Only in passive yet alert awareness can that which is unfold. This unfoldment is not of time. (COL, 1, 127.)

Domination, Conquest  See Resistance

Emptiness  We are empty, nothing

It is this fear of being nothing that drives the self into activity; but it is nothing, it is an emptiness. (COL, 1, 54.)

The things to which we are attached  property, people, ideas  become all-important, for without the many things which fill its emptiness, the self is not. The fear of not being makes for possession; and fear breeds illusion. (COL, 1, 113.)

Why do we store up flattery and insult, hurt and affection? Without this accumulation of experiences and their responses, we are not; we are nothing if we have no name, no attachment, no belief. It is the fear of being nothing that compels us to accumulate; and it is this very fear, whether conscious or unconscious, that, in spite of our accumulative activities, brings about our disintegration and destruction. If we can be aware of the truth of this fear, then it is the truth that liberates us from it, and not our purposeful determination to be free.

You are nothing. You may have your name and title, your property and bank account, you may have power and be famous; but in spite of all these safeguards, you are as nothing. You may be totally unaware of this emptiness, this nothingness, or you may simply not want to be aware of it; but it is there, do what you will to avoid it. You may try to escape from it in devious ways, through personal or collective violence, through individual or collective worship, through knowledge or amusement; but whether you are asleep or awake, it is always there. (COL, 1, 92.)

Emptiness  We fear it and try to escape it or fill it

We are empty in ourselves and we try to fill this emptiness with words, sensations, hopes and imagination; but the emptiness continues. (COL, 1, 62.)

The things to which we are attached  property, people, ideas  become all-important, for without the many things which fill its emptiness, the self is not. The fear of not being makes for possession; and fear breeds illusion. (COL, 1, 113.)

Dependence on outward line and form only indicates the emptiness of our own being, which we fill with music, with art, with deliberate silence. It is because this unvarying emptiness is filled or covered over with sensations that there is the everlasting fear of what is, of what we are. (COL, 1, 64-5.)

The cause of this inward emptiness is the desire to become; and, do what you will, this emptiness can never be filled. (COL, 1, 54.)

If you, the thinker, are afraid of it and approach it as something contrary and opposed to you, then any action you may take towards it must inevitably lead to illusion and so to further conflict and misery. (COL, 1, 92.)

Emptiness  We must face it and understand it

If we are able to face that emptiness, to be with that aching loneliness, then fear altogether disappears, and a fundamental transformation takes place. For this to happen, there must be the experiencing of that nothingness -- which is prevented if there is an experiencer. (COL, 1, 54.)

If we can be aware of the truth of this fear, then it is the truth that liberates us from it, and not our purposeful determination to be free. (COL, 1, 92.)

You can come upon your relationship to this nothingness and its fear only by being choicelessly aware of the escapes. (COL, 1, 92.)

When there is the discovery, the experiencing of this nothingness as you, then fear  which exists only when the thinker is separate from his thoughts and so tries to establish a relationship with them  completely drops away. Only then is it possible for the mind to be still; and in this tranquility, truth comes into being. (COL, 1, 92.)

Experience  Is shaped by belief, desire, conditioning

Experience is shaped by belief. (COL, 1, 73.)

Belief conditions experience, and experience then strengthens belief. What you believe, you experience. ... Belief is another cloak of desire. Knowledge, belief, conviction, conclusion and experience are hindrances to truth; they are the very structure of the self. ... The unknown can never be experienced by the known; the known, the experienced must cease for the unknown to be. (COL, 1, 89.)

Experience  Must cease for experiencing, reality, the timeless to be

The mind is aware that it cannot capture by experience and word that which ever abides, timeless and immeasurable. (COL, 2, 242.)

Experience is the response to challenge. This response is conditioned by the past, by memory; such response only strengthens the conditioning. Experience does not liberate, it strengthens belief, memory, and it is this memory that responds to challenge; so experience is the conditioner. (COL, 1, 139.)

The mind and its responses are of greater significance than the experience; and to rely on experience as a means of understanding truth is to be caught in ignorance and illusion. (COL, 1, 88.)

Experience is not reality. Reality cannot be experienced. It is. If the experiencer thinks he experiences reality, then he knows only illusion. ... Experience cannot meet reality. Experience shapes knowledge, and knowledge bends experience; they must both cease for reality to be. (COL, 1, 74.)

Experience is already in the net of time, it is already in the past, it has become a memory which comes to life only as a response to the present. Life is the present, it is not the experience. The weight and strength of experience shadow the present, and so experiencing becomes the experience. The mind is the experience, the known, and it can never be in the state of experiencing; for what it experiences is the continuation of experience. The mind only knows continuity, and it can never receive the new as long as its continuity exists. What is continuous can never be in a state of experiencing, which is a state without experience. Experience must cease for experiencing to be. (Krishamurti, COL, 1, 32.)

Belief conditions experience, and experience then strengthens belief. What you believe, you experience. The mind dictates and interprets experience, invites it or rejects it. The mind itself is the result of experience, and it can recognize or experience only that with which it is familiar, which it knows, at whatever level. The mind cannot experience what is not already known. The mind and its responses are of greater significance than the experience; and to rely on experience as a means of understanding truth is to be caught in ignorance and illusion. To desire to experience truth is to deny truth; for desire conditions, and belief is another cloak of desire. Knowledge, belief, conviction, conclusion and experience are hindrances to truth; they are the very structure of the self. The self cannot be if there is no cumulative effect of experience. (COL, 1 88-9.)

To rely on experience as a means to the discovery of what is, is to be caught in illusion. Desire, craving, conditions experience; and to depend on experience as a means to the understanding of the truth is to pursue the way of self-aggrandizement. Experience can never bring freedom from sorrow; experience is not an adequate response to the challenge of life. The challenge must be met newly, freshly, for the challenge is always new. To meet the challenge adequately, the conditioning memory of experience must be set aside, the responses of pleasure and pain must be deeply understood. Experience is an impediment to truth, for experience is of time, it is the outcome of the past; and how can a mind which is the result of experience, of time, understand the timeless? The truth of experience does not depend on personal idiosyncracies and fancies; the truth of it is perceived only when there is awareness without condemnation, justification, or any form of identification. Experience is not an approach to truth; there is no your experience or my experience, but only the intelligent understanding of the problem.

Without self-knowledge, experience breeds illusion; with self-knowledge, experience, which is the response to the challenge, does not leave a cumulative residue as memory. Self-knowledge is the discovery from moment to moment of the ways of the self, its intentions and pursuits, its thoughts and appetites. But many of us like to live in illusion, because there is great satisfaction in it; it is a private heaven which stimulates us and gives a feeling of superiority. (COL, 1, 93-4.)

The Experiencer, the Actor

It is only when the experiencer ceases that there is the creative movement of the real. (COL, 2, 232.)

As long as there is an actor, there will be division. The fusion takes place only when the mind is utterly still without trying to be still. There is this stillness, not when the thinker comes to an end, but only when thought itself has come to an end. (COL, 2, 67.)

The experiencer can never understand the whole. The experiencer is the accumulated, and there is no understanding within the shadow of the past. (COL, 1, 38.)

To be conscious of being free is not freedom. Consciousness is the experiencing of freedom or bondage, and that consciousness is the experiencer, the maker of effort. ... The breaking down of the experiencer ... cannot be done consciously. (COL, 2, 166.)

If we are able to face that emptiness, to be with that aching loneliness, then fear altogether disappears, and a fundamental transformation takes place. For this to happen, there must be the experiencing of that nothingness -- which is prevented if there is an experiencer. (COL, 1, 54.)

Experiencing  Is essential

The new comes into being only when there is experiencing; and experiencing is possible only when the urge and pursuit of sensation have ceased. (COL, I, 62.)

It is the experiencing of what is without naming it that brings about freedom from what is. (COL, 1, 54.)

What is essential is experiencing, which is denied in the pursuit of sensation. ... Experiencing, which is wholly different from the repetition of an experience, is without continuity. Only in experiencing is there renewal, transformation. (COL, 1, 65.)

The phenomenon of the observer and the observed is not a dual process, but a single one; and only in experiencing the fact of this unitary process is there freedom from desire, from conflict. The question of how to experience this fact should never arise. It must happen; and it happens only when there is alertness and passive awareness. (COL, 1, 61.)

Experiencing is not a continuity; for what has continuity is sensation, at whatever level. The repetition of sensation gives the appearance of a fresh experience, but sensations can never be new. The search of the new does not lie in repetitive sensations. The new comes into being only when there is experiencing; and experiencing is possible only when the urge and the pursuit of sensation have ceased. (COL, 1, 62.)

The moment of experiencing is totally different from the pursuit of sensation. In experiencing there is no awareness of the experiencer and his sensations. When experiencing comes to an end, then begin the sensations of the experiencer; and it is these sensations that the experiencer demands and pursues. ... Sensations become all-dominant, and not experiencing. The longing to repeat an experience is the demand for sensation; and while sensations can be repeated, experiencing cannot. (COL, 1, 64.)

Sensations have a beginning and an end, they can be repeated and expanded; but experiencing is not within the limits of time. What is essential is experiencing, which is denied in the pursuit of sensation. Sensations are limited, personal, they cause conflict and misery; but experiencing, which is wholly different from the repetition of an experience, is without continuity. Only in experiencing is there renewal, transformation. (COL, 1, 65.)

Experiencing can only come with the absence of the desire for sensation. (COL, 1, 63.)

The experiencing of the integral, unitary process frees the mind from its dualism. Thus the total process of the mind, the open as well as the hidden, is experienced and understood  not piece by piece, activity by activity, but in its entirety. Then dreams and everyday activities are ever an emptying process. The mind must be utterly empty to receive; but the craving to be empty in order to receive is a deep-seated impediment, and this also must be understood completely, not at any particular level. The craving to experience must wholly cease, which happens only when the experiencer is not nourishing himself on experiences and their memories. (COL, 1, 69.)

To understand conflict, thought must not interfere; there must be an awareness of conflict without the thinker. The thinker is the chooser who invariably takes sides with the pleasant, the gratifying, and thereby sustains conflict; he may get rid of one particular conflict, but the soil is there for further conflict. The thinker justifies or condemns, and so prevents understanding. With the thinker absent, there is the direct experiencing of conflict, but not as an experience which the experiencer is undergoing. In the state of experiencing there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. Experiencing is direct, and not through memory. It is this direct relationship that brings understanding. Understanding brings freedom from conflict; and with freedom from conflict there is integration. (COL, 1, 109.)

You must be completely denuded, without the weight of the past or the enticement of a hopeful future -- which does not mean despair. If you are in despair, there is not emptiness, no nakedness. You cannot 'do' anything. You can and must be still, without any hope, longing, or desire; but you cannot determine to be still, suppressing all noise, for in that very effort there is noise. Silence is not the opposite of noise. (COL, 2, 115.)

Externalization

The more externalized we are, the more sensations and distractions there must be, and this gives rise to a mind that is never quiet, that is not capable of deep search and discovery. (COL, 1, 14.)

Sensation is always seeking further sensation, ever in wider and wider circles. There is no end to the pleasures of sensation; they multiply, but there is always dissatisfaction in their fulfilment; there is always the desire for more, and the demand for more is without end. (COL, 1, 239.)

Fear/Freedom from Fear  The cause of fear

[The] desire for certainty through identification, through condemnation and justification, is the cause of fear, which destroys all communion. (COL, 1, 26-7.)

Fear/Freedom from Fear  Fear

It is the mind with its demands and fears, its attachments and denials, its determinations and urges, that destroys love. (COL, 2, 223.)

Problems burden the mind with fear, for problems give strength to the self, to the me and the mine. Without problems, without achievements and failures, the self is not. (COL, 1, 123.)

The desire to store up is the desire to be secure, to be certain. This desire for certainty through identification, through condemnation and justification, is the cause of fear, which destroys all communion. (COL, 1, 26-7.)

Isolation is the outcome of fear, and fear puts an end to all communion. Communion is relationship; and however pleasurable or painful relationship may be, it is there that there is the possibility of self-forgetfulness. Isolation is the way of the self, and all activity of the self brings conflict and sorrow. (COL, 1, 78.)

Communion can exist only where there is no fear; and there is gnawing fear and pain where there is usage and so dependence. As nothing can live in isolation, the attempts of the mind to isolate itself lead to its own frustration and misery. To escape from this sense of incompleteness, we seek completeness in ideas, in people, in things; and so we are back again where we started, in the search for substitutes. (COL, 1, 101.)

It is the fear of being nothing that compels us to accumulate; and it is this very fear, whether conscious or unconscious, that, in spite of our accumulative activities, brings about our disintegration and destruction. If we can be aware of the truth of this fear, then it is the truth that liberates us from it, and not our purposeful determination to be free. (COL, 1, 92.)

The fear of death is the fear of not being, of not experiencing. If there were the assurance, the certainty of experiencing, there would be no fear. Fear exists only in the relationship between the known and the unknown. The known is ever trying to capture the unknown; but it can capture only that which is already known. The unknown can never be experienced by the known; the known, the experienced must cease for the unknown to be. (COL, 1 89.)

An addiction to knowledge is like any other addiction; it offers an escape from the fear of emptiness, of loneliness, of frustration, the fear of being nothing. (COL, 1, 26.)

Loneliness, with its fear and ache, is isolation, the inevitable action of the self. This process of isolation, whether expansive or narrow, is productive of confusion, conflict and sorrow. Isolation can never give birth to aloneness; the one has to cease for the other to be. Aloneness is indivisible and loneliness is separation. That which is alone is pliable and so enduring. Only the alone can commune with that which is causeless, the immeasurable. To the alone, life is eternal; to the alone there is no death. The alone can never cease to be. (COL, I, 17-8.)

To experience, all identification must cease. To experiment, there must be no fear. Fear prevents experience. It is fear that makes for identification -- identification with another, with a group, with an ideology, and so on. (COL, 1, 13.)

Fear/Freedom from Fear  Freedom from Fear

It is fear that creates the resistance called discipline; but the spontaneous discovery of fear is freedom from fear. Conformity to a pattern, at whatever level, is fear, which only breeds conflict, confusion and antagonism; but a mind that is in revolt is not fearless, for the opposite can never know the spontaneous, the free. (COL, 1, 135.)

The covering up of what is [with illusion ] is prompted by fear. Fear can never be overcome by an act of will, for will is the outcome of resistance. Only through passive yet alert awareness is there freedom from fear. (COL, 1, 82.)

It is this fear of being nothing that drives the self into activity; but it is nothing, it is an emptiness.

If we are able to face that emptiness, to be with that aching loneliness, then fear altogether disappears, and a fundamental transformation takes place. For this to happen, there must be the experiencing of that nothingness -- which is prevented if there is an experiencer. ... It is the experiencing of what is without naming it that brings about freedom from what is. (COL,1, 54.)

When he directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, then only can there be freedom from fear. Fear exists only in relationship to an idea, and idea is the response of memory as thought. Thought is the result of experience; and though it can ponder over emptiness, have sensations with regard to it, it cannot know emptiness directly. The word loneliness, with its memories of pain and fear, prevents the experiencing of it afresh. The word is memory, and when the word is no longer significant, then the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is wholly different; then that relationship is direct and not through a word, through memory; then the experiencer is the experience, which alone brings freedom from fear. (COL, 1, 106.)

Fear is not to be put away by appeasements and candles; it ends with the cessation of the desire to become. (COL, 1, 67.)

When [one] directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, then only can there be freedom from fear. (COL, 3, 105.)

Freedom  Identification destroys freedom

Identification gives pleasure and power. In the name of the Master, pleasure and power have become respectable. You are no longer lonely, confused, lost; you belong to him, to the party, the idea. You are safe. (COL, 1, 74.)

Once it has experienced the pleasure which identification brings, the mind is firmly entrenched and nothing can shake it; for its criterion is experience. (COL, 1, 74.)

Achievement is identification, and identification is will. (COL, 1, 80.)

Identification, surely, is possession, the assertion of ownership; and ownership denies love, does it not? To own is to be secure; possession is defence, making oneself invulnerable. In identification there is resistance, whether gross or subtle; and is there love where there is defence. Love is vulnerable, pliable, receptive; it is the highest form of sensitivity, and identification makes for insensitivity. Identification and love do not go together, for the one destroys the other. ... Identification destroys freedom, and only in freedom can there be the highest form of sensitivity. (COL, 1, 12-3.)

To experience, all identification must cease. To experiment, there must be no fear. Fear prevents experience. It is fear that makes for identification -- identification with another, with a group, with an ideology, and so on. (COL, 1, 13.)

Freedom  The truth alone frees

When there is understanding there is freedom. (COL, 1, 67.)

Truth alone liberates, and not your desire to be free. The very desire and effort to be free is a hindrance to liberation. (COL, 2, 104.)

The truth frees.... The highest state of inaction is the action of truth. (Krishanmurti, COL, 2, 37.)

To see the false as the false, to see the true in the false, and to see the true as the true -- it is this that sets the mind free. (COL, 3, 4.)

To see the false as the false, and the truth in the false, and the true as the true, is not easy. To perceive clearly, there must be freedom from desire, which twists and conditions the mind. (COL, 2, 125.)

To be conscious of being free is not freedom. Consciousness is the experiencing of freedom or bondage, and that consciousness is the experiencer, the maker of effort. (COL, 2,166.)

To be ignorant is not to be free of knowledge. Ignorance is the lack of self-awareness; and knowledge is ignorance when there is no understanding of the ways of the self. Understanding of the self is freedom from knowledge. (COL, 1, 26.)

The denial of thought does not bring about love. There is freedom from thought only when its deep significance is fully understood; and for this, profound self-knowledge is essential, not vain and superficial assertions. Meditation and not repetition, awareness and not definition, reveal the ways of thought. Without being aware and experiencing the ways of thought, love cannot be. (COL, 1, 17.)

You must be completely denuded, without the weight of the past or the enticement of a hopeful future -- which does not mean despair. If you are in despair, there is not emptiness, no nakedness. You cannot 'do' anything. You can and must be still, without any hope, longing, or desire; but you cannot determine to be still, suppressing all noise, for in that very effort there is noise. (COL, 2, 115.)

The experiencing of the integral, unitary process frees the mind from its dualism. Thus the total process of the mind, the open as well as the hidden, is experienced and understood -- not piece by piece, activity by activity, but in its entirety. (COL, 1, 69.)

Freedom  Is the beginning

Freedom is at the beginning, not at the end; the goal is the first step, the means is the end. The first step must be free, and not the last. (COL, 2, 25.)

The Future  Reality can be understood only with fading of tomorrow

To be certain of the future is to be in illusion. (COL, 1, 75.)

The future is always more alluring than the present. (COL, 1, 85-6.)

The sacrificing of the present to the future is the insanity of those who are power-mad. (COL, 1, 75.)

What is can be understood only with the fading of tomorrow. The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation that is of supreme importance. (COL, 1, 52.)

Happiness  Happiness through something breeds conflict

Happiness through something must invariably beget conflict, for then the means is vastly more significant and important than happiness itself. If I get happiness through the beauty of that chair, then the chair becomes all-important to me and I must guard it against others. In this struggle, the happiness which I once felt in the beauty of the chair is utterly forgotten, lost, and I am left with the chair. In itself, the chair has little value; but I have given it extraordinary value, for it is the means of my happiness. So the means becomes a substitute for happiness. (COL, 1, 100.)

If I use you for my happiness, am I really related to you? Relationship implies communion with another on different levels; and is there communion with another when he is only a tool, a means of my happiness? (COL, 1, 101.)

Hesitancy  See Spontaneity

Humility

Being as nothing is not negation. (COL, 1, 67.)

Humility is essential for experiencing. But how eager is the mind to absorb the experiencing into experience! How swift is the mind to think about the new and thus make of it the old! So it establishes the experiencer and the experienced, which gives birth to the conflict of duality. (COL, 1, 32.)

Idea  Is not action

Idea becomes a factor in action in order to modify it, to control it, to shape it; but idea is not action. Idea, belief, is a safeguard against action; it has a place as a controller, modifying and shaping action. Idea is the pattern for action. (COL, 1, 139.)

If one is seeking conformity, then thought, idea, has a place. The function of thought is to create a pattern for so-called action, and thereby to kill action. Most of us are concerned with the killing of action; and idea, belief, dogma, help to destroy it. Action implies insecurity, vulnerability to the unknown; and thought, belief, which is the known, is an effective barrier to the unknown. Thought can never penetrate into the unknown; it must cease for the unknown to be. The action of the unknown is beyond the action of thought; and thought, being aware of this, consciously or unconsciously clings to the known. The known is ever responding to the unknown, to the challenge; and from this inadequate response arise conflict, confusion and misery. It is only when the known, the idea, ceases that there can be the action of the unknown, which is measureless. (COL, 1, 139-40.)

The Ideal, Pattern, or Conclusion

The myth, the ideal, is unreal; it is a self-projected escape, it has no actuality. The actual is what you are. What you are is much more important than what you should be. You can understand what is, but you cannot understand what should be. There is no understanding of an illusion, there is only understanding of the way it comes into being. The myth, the fictitious, the ideal, has no validity; it is a result, an end, and what is important is to understand the process through which it has come into being.

To understand that which you are, whether pleasant or unpleasant, the myth, the ideal, the self-projected future state, must entirely cease. Then only can you tackle what is. (COL, 1, 127.)

What is important is not how to be consistent with the pattern, with the ideal, but to discover why we have cultivated this fixed point, this conclusion; for if we had no pattern, then contradiction would disappear. So, why have we the ideal, the conclusion? Does not the ideal prevent action? Does not the ideal come into being to modify action, to control action? Is it not possible to act without the ideal? The ideal is the response of the background, of conditioning, and so it can never be the means of liberating man from conflict and confusion. On the contrary, the ideal, the conclusion, increases division between man and man and so hastens the process of disintegration.

If there is no fixed point, no ideal from which to deviate, there is no contradiction with its urge to be consistent; then there is only action from moment to moment, and that action will always be complete and true. The true is not an ideal, a myth, but the actual. The actual can be understood and dealt with. The understanding of the actual cannot breed enmity, whereas ideals do. Ideals can never bring about a fundamental revolution, but only a modified continuity of the old. There is fundamental and constant revolution only in action from moment to moment which is not based on an ideal and so is free of conclusion. (COL, 1, 129-30.)

Complete action demands swift adjustment, which is intelligence; and it is only when there is no intelligence that we resort to conclusions, ideals, goals. (COL, 130.)

Only a dead thing can be forced to conform to a pattern; and as life is in constant movement, there is contradiction the moment we try to fit life into a fixed pattern or conclusion. Conformity to a pattern is the disintegration of the individual . The ideal is not superior to life, and when we make it so there is confusion, antagonism and misery. (COL, 1, 130.)

Identification  See Freedom  Identification destroys freedom

Identity, Idea of Ourselves

Identity as idea, as being, as knowledge, as becoming, at whatever level, is difficult to perceive and bring to light. (COL, 1, 89.)

The idea is more important to us than the fact; the concept of what one should be has more significance than what one is. ... The image, the symbol, is of greater worth than the actual; and on the actual we try to superimpose the idea, the pattern. So we create a contradiction between what is and what should be. ... (COL, 1, 85-6.)

The mind is aware that it cannot capture by experience and word that which ever abides, timeless and immeasurable. (COL, 2, 242.)

What is it that we defend, that we so carefully guard? Surely, it is the idea of ourselves, at whatever level. If we did not guard the idea, the centre of accumulation, there would be no me and mine. The idea of ourselves is wholly superficial; but as most of us live on the surface, we are content with illusions. (COL, 1, 91.)

Ignorance

To be ignorant is not to be free of knowledge. Ignorance is the lack of self-awareness; and knowledge is ignorance when there is no understanding of the ways of the self. Understanding of the self is freedom from knowledge. (COL, 1, 26.)

Illusion  The Idea

Ignorance of the ways of the self leads to illusion. (COL, 1, 82.)

The self is the idea, the pattern, the bundle of memories; and each fulfillment is the further continuity of idea, of experience. (COL, 1, 87.)

Thought is the response of memory, of determined conclusions, conscious or unconscious; this memory dictates action according to pleasure and pain. So ideas control action, and hence there is conflict between action and idea. The conflict is always with us, and as it intensifies there is an urge to be free from it; but until this conflict is understood and resolved, any attempt to be free from it is an escape. As long as action is approximating to an idea, conflict is inevitable. (COL, 1, 120-1.)

Idea is always a conclusion, an end, a self-projected goal. Idea is movement within the known; but thought cannot formulate what it is to be non-violent [for example]. Non-violence is not an idea; it cannot be made into a pattern of action. (COL, 1, 111.)

What has continuity can never be other than that which it is, with certain modifications; but those modifications do not give it a newness. It may take on a different cloak, a different colour; but it is still the idea, the memory, the word. (COL, 1, 90.)

Why do we cling to the idea, deliberately or unconsciously, and put aside the actual? The idea, the pattern, is self-projected; it is a form of self-worship, of self-perpetuation, and hence gratifying. The idea gives power to dominate, to be assertive, to guide, to shape; and in the idea, which is self-projected, there is never the denial of the self, the disintegration of the self. So the pattern or idea enriches the self; and this is also considered to be love. I love my son or my husband and I want him to be this or that, I want him to be something other than he is. (COL, 1, 86.)

The idea is more important to us than the fact; the concept of what one should be has more significance than what one is. ... The image, the symbol, is of greater worth than the actual; and on the actual we try to superimpose the idea, the pattern. So we create a contradiction between what is and what should be. (COL, 1, 85-6.)

Conflict exists in us between the idea and what is because the self-projected idea offers greater satisfaction than what is. (COL, 1, 86.)

We like the illusion better than the actual; the idea is more appealing, more satisfying, and so we cling to it. Thus the illusion becomes the real and the actual becomes the false, and in this conflict between the so-called real and the so-called false we are caught. (COL, 1, 86.)

Illusion is very gratifying, and hence our attachment to it. Illusion may bring pain, but this very pain exposes our incompleteness and drives us to be wholly identified with the illusion. Thus illusion has great significance in our lives; it helps to cover up what is, not externally but inwardly. This disregard of the inward what is leads to wrong interpretation of what is outwardly, which brings about destruction and misery. (COL, 1, 82.)

Once caught in the net of illusion, it is extremely hard to break through it. It is difficult to recognize an illusion, for, having created it, the mind cannot be made still, for the maker himself is a product of the mind, of desire. (COL, 1, 82.)

If we are to understand what is, the pattern or idea must be set aside. To set aside the idea becomes difficult only when there is no urgency in the understanding of what is. (COL, 1, 86.)

It is only when what is, the actual, has to be faced that the pattern is broken; so it is not a matter of how to be free from the idea, but of how to face the actual. It is possible to face the actual only when there is an understanding of the process of gratification, the way of the self. (COL, 1, 86.)

There must be an awareness of this total process, a choiceless awareness; then only is there the possibility of not breeding illusion. (COL, 1, 82.)

The covering up of what is [with illusion] is prompted by fear. Fear can never be overcome by an act of will, for will is the outcome of resistance. Only through passive yet alert awareness is there freedom from fear. (COL, 1, 82.)

Illusion  Experience  See also Experience

To rely on experience as a means to the discovery of what is, is to be caught in illusion. Desire, craving, conditions experience; and to depend on experience as a means to the understanding of the truth is to pursue the way of self-aggrandizement. Experience can never bring freedom from sorrow; experience is not an adequate response to the challenge of life. The challenge must be met newly, freshly, for the challenge is always new. To meet the challenge adequately, the conditioning memory of experience must be set aside, the responses of pleasure and pain must be deeply understood. Experience is an impediment to truth, for experience is of time, it is the outcome of the past; and how can a mind which is the result of experience, of time, understand the timeless? The truth of experience does not depend on personal idiosyncracies and fancies; the truth of it is perceived only when there is awareness without condemnation, justification, or any form of identification. Experience is not an approach to truth; there is no your experience or my experience, but only the intelligent understanding of the problem.

Without self-knowledge, experience breeds illusion; with self-knowledge, experience, which is the response to the challenge, does not leave a cumulative residue as memory. Self-knowledge is the discovery from moment to moment of the ways of the self, its intentions and pursuits, its thoughts an appetites. But many of us like to live in illusion, because there is great satisfaction in it; it is a private heaven which stimulates us and gives a feeling of superiority. (COL, 1, 93-4.)

Illusion  Conformity

Self-awareness is arduous, and since most of us prefer an easy, illusory way, we bring into being the authority that gives shape and pattern to our life. This authority may be the collective, the State; or it may be the personal, the Master, the saviour, the guru. Authority of any kind is blinding, it breeds thoughtlessness; and as most of us find that to be thoughtful is to have pain, we give ourselves over to authority.

It is your own life, this seemingly endless conflict, that is significant, and not the pattern or the leader. The authority of the Master and the priest takes you away from the central issue, which is the conflict within yourself. Suffering can never be understood and dissolved through the search for a way of life. Such a search is mere avoidance of suffering, the imposition of a pattern, which is escape; and what is avoided only festers, bringing more calamity and pain. The understanding of yourself, however painful or passingly pleasurable, is the beginning of wisdom. (COL, 1, 96-7.)

It is the fear of being nothing that compels us to accumulate; and it is this very fear, whether conscious or unconscious, that, in spite of our accumulative activities, brings about our disintegration and destruction. If we can be aware of the truth of this fear, then it is the truth that liberates us from it, and not our purposeful determination to be free. (COL, 1, 92.)

The idea gives power to dominate, to be assertive, to guide, to shape; and in the idea, which is self-projected, there is never the denial of the self, the disintegration of the self. (COL, 1, 86.)

Conformity to a pattern is the disintegration of the individual . The ideal is not superior to life, and when we make it so there is confusion, antagonism and misery. (COL, 1, 130.)

The ideal is the response of the background, of conditioning, and so it can never be the means of liberating man from conflict and confusion. On the contrary, the ideal, the conclusion, increases division between man and man and so hastens the process of disintegration. (COL, 1, 129.)

Integration can never be limited to the upper layers of the mind; it is not something to be learnt in a school; it does not come into being with knowledge or with self-immolation. Integration alone brings freedom from consistency and contradiction; but integration is not a matter of fusing into one all desires and multiple interests. Integration is not conformity to a pattern, however noble and cunning; it must be approached, not directly, positively, but obliquely, negatively. To have a conception of integration is to conform to a pattern, which only cultivates stupidity and destruction. To pursue integration is to make of it an ideal, a self-projected goal. Since all ideals are self-projected, they inevitably cause conflict and enmity. What the self projects must be of its own nature, and therefore contradictory and confusing. Integration is not an idea, a mere response of memory, and so it cannot be cultivated. The desire for integration comes into being because of conflict; but through cultivating integration, conflict is not transcended. You may cover up, deny contradiction, or be unconscious of it; but it is there, waiting to break out. (COL, 1, 108.)

Integration/Distintegration  Integration

Integration cannot be arrived at; arrival is death. It is not a goal, an end, but a state of being; it is a living thing, and how can a living thing be a goal, a purpose? The desire to be integrated is not different from any other desire, and all desire is a cause of conflict. When there is no conflict, there is integration. Integration is a state of complete attention. There cannot be complete attention is there is effort, conflict, resistance, concentration. Concentration is a fixation; concentration is a, process of separation, exclusion, and complete attention is not possible when there is exclusion. To exclude is to narrow down, and the narrow can never be aware of the complete. Complete, full attention is not possible when there is condemnation, justification, or identification, or when the mind is clouded by conclusions, speculations, theories. When we understand the hindrances, then only is there freedom. Freedom is an abstraction to the man in prison; but passive watchfulness uncovers the hindrances, and with freedom from these, integration comes into being. (COL, 2, 51.)

In understanding conflict there will not only be integration and peace, but something infinitely greater. (COL, 1, 108.)

Experiencing is direct, and not through memory. It is this direct relationship that brings understanding. Understanding brings freedom from conflict; and with freedom from conflict there is integration. (COL, 1, 109.)

Jealousy  See Love  Is not jealousy

Knowledge  It cannot penetrate the unknown

All knowledge of reality is illusion. Knowledge or experience must cease for the being of reality. Experience cannot meet reality. Experience shapes knowledge, and knowledge bends experience; they must both cease for reality to be. (COL, 1, 74.)

The light of knowledge is a delicate covering under which lies a darkness that the mind cannot penetrate. The mind is frightened of this unknown, and so it escapes into knowledge, into theories, hopes, imagination; and this very knowledge is a hindrance to the understanding of the unknown. (COL, 1, 26.)

Knowledge is a flash of light between two darknesses; but knowledge cannot go above and beyond that darkness. Knowledge is essential to technique, as coal is to the engine; but it cannot reach out into the unknown. The unknown is not to be caught in the web of the known. Knowledge must be set aside for the unknown to be; but how difficult that is! (COL, 1, 26.)

The gathering of facts does not make for the understanding of life. Knowledge is one thing, and understanding another. Knowledge does not lead to understanding; but understanding may enrich knowledge, and knowledge may implement understanding. (COL, 3, 3.)

Mere knowledge, however wide and cunningly put together, will not resolve our human problems; to assume that it will is to invite frustration and misery. Something much more profound is needed. One may know that hate is futile, but to be free of hate is quite another matter. Love is not a question of knowledge. (COL, 3, 3.)

Our minds are stuffed with so much knowledge that it is almost impossible to experience directly. (COL, 1, 61.)

We are not attacking or defending knowledge, but trying to understand the whole problem. Knowledge is only a part of life, not the totality, and when that part assumes all-consuming importance, as it is threatening to do now, then life becomes superficial, a dull routine from which man seeks to escape through every form of diversion and superstition, with disastrous consequences. (COL, 3, 3.)

The known is ever trying to capture the unknown; but it can capture only that which is already known. The unknown can never be experienced by the known; the known, the experienced must cease for the unknown to be. (COL, 1, 89.)

Understanding of the self is freedom from knowledge. (COL, 1, 26.)

There cannot be the experiencing of the unknown until the mind ceases to experience. Thought is the expression of experience; thought is a response of memory; and as long as thinking intervenes, there can be no experiencing. (COL, 1, 32.)

Thought cannot penetrate into the unknown, and so it can never discover or experience reality. (COL, 1, 44.)

Thought can only deny or assert, it cannot discover or search out the new. Thought cannot come upon the new; but when thought is silent, then there may be the new. (COL, 1, 44.)

Without thought there is no thinker. Thoughts create the thinker, who isolates himself to give himself permanency; for thoughts are always impermanent. (COL, 1, 69.)

The understanding of what is does not depend on thought, for thought is itself an escape. To think about the problem is not to understand it. It is only when the mind is silent that the truth of what is unfolds. (COL, 2, 41.)

Thought is binding; thought can only lead to the vast expanse of time, the field in which knowledge, action, virtue, have importance. (COL, 2, 167.)

Knowledge  Addiction to knowledge is like any addiction

An addiction to knowledge is like any other addiction; it offers an escape from the fear of emptiness, of loneliness, of frustration, the fear of being nothing. (COL, 1, 26.)

Listening

The purification of confession does not depend on the one who listens, but on him who desires to open his heart. (COL, 1, 140.)

To be open is to listen, not only to yourself, but to every influence, to every movement about you. It may or may not be possible to do something tangibly about what you hear, but the very fact of being open brings about its own action. Such hearing purifies your own heart, cleansing it of the things of the mind. Hearing with the mind is gossip, and in it there is no release either for you or for the other; it is merely a continuation of pain, which is stupidity. (COL, 1, 141.)

Loneliness  See also Emptiness  We try to fill it

This aloneness is not aching, fearsome loneliness. It is the aloneness of being; it is uncorrupted, rich, complete. One can truly communicate only when there is aloneness. Being alone is not the outcome of denial, of self-enclosure. Aloneness is the purgation of all motives, of all pursuits of desire, of all ends. Aloneness is not the by-product of the mind. You cannot wish to be alone. Such a wish is merely an escape from the pain of not being able to commune.

Loneliness, with its fear and ache, is isolation, the inevitable action of the self. This process of isolation, whether expansive or narrow, is productive of confusion, conflict and sorrow. Isolation can never give birth to aloneness; the one has to cease for the other to be. Aloneness is indivisible and loneliness is separation. That which is alone is pliable and so enduring. Only the alone can commune with that which is causeless, the immeasurable. To the alone, life is eternal; to the alone there is no death. The alone can never cease to be. (COL, I, 17-8.)

We are empty in ourselves and we try to fill this emptiness with words, sensations, hopes and imagination; but the emptiness continues. (COL, 1, 62.)

It is in this activity that one is caught; and when for some reason or other activity stops, then one feels lost and life becomes meaningless, empty. We are aware of this emptiness, consciously or unconsciously, and so idea and activity become all-important. We fill this emptiness with belief, and activity becomes an intoxicating necessity. For the sake of this activity, we will renounce; we will adjust ourselves to any inconvenience, to any illusion. (COL, 1, 56.)

When [one] directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, then only can there be freedom from fear. (COL, 3, 105.)

It is this fear of being nothing that drives the self into activity; but it is nothing, it is an emptiness.

If we are able to face that emptiness, to be with that aching loneliness, then fear altogether disappears, and a fundamental transformation takes place. For this to happen, there must be the experiencing of that nothingness -- which is prevented if there is an experiencer. ... It is the experiencing of what is without naming it that brings about freedom from what is. (COL,1, 54.)

What a strange thing is loneliness, and how frightening it is! We never allow ourselves to get too close to it; and if by chance we do, we quickly run away from it. We will do anything to escape from loneliness, to cover it up. Our conscious and unconscious preoccupation seems to be to avoid it or to overcome it. Avoiding and overcoming loneliness are equally futile; though suppressed or neglected, the pain, the problem is still there. You may be ambitious and successful, you may have vast power over others, you may be rich in knowledge, you may worship and forget yourself in the rigmarole of rituals, but do what you will, the ache of loneliness continues. You may love or hate, escape from it according to your temperament and psychological demands; but loneliness is there, waiting and watching, withdrawing only to approach again.

Loneliness is the awareness of complete isolation; and are not our activities self-enclosing? Though our thoughts and emotions are expansive, are they not exclusive and dividing? Are we not seeking dominance in our relationships, in our rights and possessions, thereby creating resistance? Do we not regard work as yours and mine? Are we not identified with the collective, with the country, or with the few? Is not our whole tendency to isolate ourselves, to divide and separate? The very activity of the self, at whatever level, is the way of isolation; and loneliness is the consciousness of the self without activity. Activity, whether physical or psychological, becomes a means of self-expansion; and when there is not activity of any kind, there is an awareness of the emptiness of the self. It is this emptiness that we seek to fill, and in filling it we spend our life, whether at a noble or ignoble level. There may seem to be no sociological harm in filling this emptiness at a noble level; but illusion breeds untold misery and destruction, which may not be immediate. The craving to fill this emptiness  or to run away from it, which is the same thing  cannot be sublimated or suppressed, for who is the entity that is to suppress or sublimate? Is not that very entity another form of craving? The objects of craving may vary, but is not all craving similar? You may change the object of your craving from drink to ideation; but without understanding the process of craving, illusion is inevitable.

There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. Craving takes of different masks at different times, depending on its interests. The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, and so the chooser is born, establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving. But the entity is not different from its qualities. The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is understand himself. He is his loneliness, his emptiness; and as long as he regards it as something separate from himself, he will be in illusion and endless conflict. When he directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, then only can there be freedom from fear. Fear exists only in relationship to an idea, and idea is the response of memory as thought. Thought is the result of experience; and though it can ponder over emptiness, have sensations with regard to it, it cannot know emptiness directly. The word loneliness, with its memories of pain and fear, prevents the experiencing of it afresh. The word is memory, and when the word is no longer significant, then the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is wholly different; then that relationship is direct and not through a word, through memory; then the experiencer is the experience, which alone brings freedom from fear.

Love and emptiness cannot abide together; when there is the feeling of loneliness, love is not. You may hide emptiness under the word love, but when the object of your love is no longer there or does not respond, then you are aware of emptiness, you are frustrated. We use the word love as a means of escaping from ourselves, from our own insufficiency. We cling to the one we love, we are jealous, we miss him when he is not there and are utterly lost when he dies; and then we seek comfort in some other form, in some belief, in some substitute. Is all this love? Love is not an idea, the result of association; love is not something to be used as an escape from our own wretchedness; and when we do use it, we make problems which have no solutions. Love is not an abstraction, but its reality can be experienced only when idea, mind, is no longer the supreme factor. (COL, 1, 103-6.)

Loneliness  We fear inner solitude

Fear is not an abstraction; it exists only in relationship to something. Fear does not exist of itself; it exists as a word, but it is felt only in contact with something else. What is it that you are afraid of?

Of this inner solitude.

The known looking at the unknown brings about fear; it is this activity that causes fear. So your fear is really not of the inner solitude, but the past is afraid of something it does not know, has not experienced. The past wants to absorb the new, make of it an experience. But can the past, which is you, experience the new, the unknown? The known can experience only that which is of itself, it can never experience the new, the unknown. By giving the unknown a name, by calling it inner soliutude, you have only recognized it verbally, and the word is taking the place of experiencing; for the word is the screen of fear. The term inner solitude is covering the fact, the what is, and the very word is creating fear. (COL, 2, 9.)

The known, past experience, is trying to absorb what it calls the inner solitude; but it cannot experience it, for it does not know what it is; it knows the term, but not what is behind the term. The unknown cannot be experienced. You may think or speculate about the unknown, or be afraid of it; but thought cannot comprehend it, for thought is the outcome of the known, of experience. As thought cannot known the unknown, it is afraid of it. There will be fear as long as thought desires to experience, to understand the unknown.

If you listen rightly, the truth of all this will be seen, and then truth will be the only action. Whatever thought does with regard to inner solitude is an escape, an avoidance of what is. In avoiding what is, thought creates its own conditioning [This is universal among humans. Ed.] which prevents the experiencing of the new, the unknown. Fear is the only response of thought to the unknown; thought may call it by different terms, but still it is fear. Just see that thought cannot operate upon the unknown, upon what is behind the term, inner solitude. Only then does what is unfold itself, and it is inexhaustible.

Now, if one may suggest, leave it alone; you have heard, and let that work as it will. To be still after tilling and sowing is to give birth to creation. (COL, 2, 9-10.)

Love  Its nature and its ways

Love is so rare in this world, that flame without smoke; the smoke is overpowering, all-suffocating, bringing anguish and tears. Through the smoke, the flame is rarely seen; and when the smoke becomes all-important, the flame dies. Without that flame of love, life has no meaning, it becomes dull and weary; but the flame cannot be in the darkening smoke. The two cannot exist together; the smoke must cease for the clear flame to be. The flame is not a rival of the smoke; it has no rival. The smoke is not the flame, it cannot contain the flame; nor does the smoke indicate the presence of the flame, for the flame is free of smoke. (COL, 1, 131.)

Love - Is not idea

Love is not related to idea, and so idea cannot commune with love. Love is a flame without smoke. (COL, 1, 133.)

Love is a strange thing, and how easily we lose the warm flame of it! The flame is lost, and the smoke remains. The smoke fills our hearts and minds, and our days are spent in tears and bitterness. We never know how to keep the flame clear of smoke, and the smoke always smothers the flame. But love is not of the mind, it is not in the net of thought, it cannot be sought out, cultivated, cherished; it is there when the mind is silent and the heart is empty of the things of the mind. (COL, 2, 38.)

Love  Is not sensation

Love is not sensation. Sensations give birth to thought through words and symbols. Sensations and thought replace love; they become the substitute for love. Sensations are of the mind, as sexual appetites are. The mind breeds the appetite, the passion, through remembrance, from which it derives gratifying sensations. Love is not of the mind; but when the mind takes over there is sensation, which it then calls love. It is this love of the mind that can be thought about, that can be clothed and identified. Within the field of the mind, love cannot be. Mind is the area of fear and calculation, envy and domination, comparison and denial, and so love is not. Love and the processes of the mind cannot be bridged over, cannot be made one. When sensations predominate, there is no space for love; so the things of the mind fill the heart. Thus love becomes the unknown, to be pursued and worshipped; it is made into an ideal, to be used and believed in, and the ideals are always self-projected. So the mind takes over completely, and love becomes a word, a sensation. Then love is made comparative, I love you more and you love less. But love is neither personal nor impersonal; love is a state of being in which sensation as thought is wholly absent. (COL, 1, 102.)

Love  Is not jealousy

We use the word love as a means of escaping from ourselves, from our own insufficiency. We cling to the one we love, we are jealous, we miss him when he is not there and are utterly lost when he dies; and then we seek comfort in some other form, in some belief, in some substitute. Is all this love? Love is not an idea, the result of association; love is not something to be used as an escape from our own wretchedness; and when we do use it, we make problems which have no solutions. Love is not an abstraction, but its reality can be experienced only when idea, mind, is no longer the supreme factor. (COL, 1, 103-6.)

We approach the facts in the field of so-called love with idea, with conclusion. We do not take the fact of jealousy as it is and silently observe it, but we want to twist the fact according to the pattern, to the conclusion; and we approach it in this way because we really do not wish to understand the fact of jealousy. The sensations of jealousy are as stimulating as a caress; but we want stimulation without the pain and discomfort that invariably go with it. So there is conflict, confusion and antagonism within this field which we call love. But is it love? Is love an idea, a sensation, a stimulation? Is love jealousy? (COL, 1, 132.)

Jealousy is one of the ways of holding the man or the woman, is it not? The more we are jealous, the greater the feeling of possession. To possess something makes us happy; to call something, even a dog, exclusively our own makes us feel warm and comfortable. To be exclusive in our possession gives assurance and certainty to ourselves. To own something makes up important; it is this importance we cling to. To feel that we own, not a pencil or a house, but a human being, makes us feel strong and strangely content. (COL, 1, 141.)

Love  Admits no division

Love admits no division. Either you love, or do not love; but do not make the lack of love a long-drawn-out process whose end is love. When you know you do not love, when you are choicelessly aware of that fact, then there is a possibility of transformation. (COL, 1, 95.)

Love  Its presence is essential

Without love, do what you may, you will not know the total action which alone can save man. (COL, 3, 82.)

To love is to be in direct communion; and you cannot love something if you resent it, if you have ideas, conclusions about it. How can you love and understand passion if you have taken a vow against it? A vow is a form of resistance, and what you resist ultimately conquers you. (COL, 2, 56.)

Love is not a question of knowledge. (COL, 3, 3.)

We love with our minds and not with our hearts. Mind can modify itself, but love cannot. Mind can make itself invulnerable, but love cannot; mind can always withdraw, be exclusive, become personal or impersonal. Love is not to be compared and hedged about. Our difficulty lies in that which we call love, which is really of the mind. We fill our hearts with the things of the mind and so keep our hearts ever empty and expectant. It is the mind that clings, that is envious, that holds and destroys. Our life is dominated by the physical centres and by the mind. We do not love and let it alone, but crave to be loved; we give in order to receive, which is the generosity of the mind and not of the heart. The mind is ever seeking certainty, security; and can love be made certain by the mind? Can the mind, whose very essence is of time, catch love, which is its own eternity? (COL, 1, 41.)

It is because thought plays the role of love that all the complications and sorrows arise. (COL, 1, 16.)

The process of thought ever denies love. It is thought that has emotional complications, not love. Thought is the greatest hindrance to love. Thought creates a division between what is and what should be, and on this division morality is based; but neither the moral nor the immoral know love. (COL, 1, 16.)

Thought, with its emotional and sensational content, is not love. Thought is founded on memory, and love is not memory. ... It is only when the thought process ceases that there can be love. (COL, 1, 15.)

Love is a state of being in which thought is not; but the very definition of love is a process of thought, and so it is not love. (COL, 1, 16.)

To fill your heart with the things of the mind is to leave no room for love. (COL, 1, 16.)

Love is not of the mind, it is not [caught] in the net of thought, it cannot be sought out, cultivated, cherished; it is there when the mind is silent and the heart is empty of the things of the mind. (COL, 2, 38.)

Love alone can bring about a radical revolution or transformation in relationship; and love is not a thing of the mind. Thought can plan and formulate magnificent structures of hope, but thought will only lead to further conflict, confusion and misery. Love is when the cunning, self-enclosing mind is not. (COL, 2, 113.)

The totality of love is not within the measure of the mind; and to know that totality, the mind must be empty of its occupations, however noble or self-centred. To ask how to empty the mind, or how not to be self-centred, is to pursue a method; and the pursuit of a method is another occupation of the mind. (COL, 3, 85-6.)

Our greatest difficulty is to be widely and deeply aware that there is no means to love as a desirable end of the mind. When we understand this really and profoundly, then there is a possibility of receiving something that is not of this world. Without the touch of that something, do what we will, there can be no lasting happiness in relationship. (COL, 1, 42.)

Until there is that love which is not of my making, relationship is pain. If there is the benediction of that love, you cannot but love me whatever I may be, for then you do not shape love according to my behavior. (COL, 1, 42.)

The denial of thought does not bring about love. There is freedom from thought only when its deep significance is fully understood; and for this, profound self-knowledge is essential, not vain and superficial assertions. Meditation and not repetition, awareness and not definition, reveal the ways of thought. Without being aware and experiencing the ways of thought, love cannot be. (COL, 1, 17.)

Thought does not lead to love, thought does not cultivate love; for love cannot be cultivated as a plant in the garden. The very desire to cultivate love is the action of thought. (COL, 1, 16.)

Whatever you may do, any device that you invent, will only strengthen that which has not been loved and understood. (COL, 2, 56.)

Love  Comes into being in the quiet mind

The mind is quiet only when it is not caught in thought, which is the net of its own activity. When the mind is still, not made still, a true factor, love, comes into being. (COL, 2, 32.)

Meditation

Right meditation is essential for the purgation of the mind, for without the emptying of the mind there can be no renewal. (COL, 1, 67.)

Meditation and not repetition, awareness and not definition, reveal the ways of thought. Without being aware and experiencing the ways of thought, love cannot be. (COL, 1, 17.)

Meditation is the breaking of all bondage; it is a state of freedom, but not from anything. Freedom from something is only the cultivation of resistance. (COL, 2, 166.)

There is great bliss in meditation. (COL, 2, 219.)

Meditation is the breaking down of the experiencer, which cannot be done consciously. (COL, 2, 166.)

Awareness, without any choice, of the ways of the mind, is the beginning of meditation. (COL, 1, 84.)

Choiceless awareness ... is not for something; it is to be aware of the craving for an end and of the means to it. This choiceless awareness brings an understanding of what is. (COL, 1, 89.)

Awareness must go into the deeper layers of consciousness and not be content with surface responses. (COL, 1, 31.)

A mind that is capable of concentration is not necessarily able to meditate. Self-interest does bring about concentration, like any other interest, but such concentration implies a motive, a cause, conscious or unconscious; there is always a thing to be gained or set aside, an effort to comprehend, to get to the other shore. Attention with an aim is concerned with accumulation. The attention that comes with movement towards or away from something is the attraction of pleasure or the repulsion of pain, but meditation is that extraordinary attention in which there is no maker of effort, no end or object to be gained. Effort is part of the acquisitive process, it is the gathering of experience by the experiencer. The experiencer may concentrate, pay attention, be aware; but the craving of the experiencer for experience must wholly cease, for the experiencer is merely an accumulation of the known. (COL, 2, 219.)

Concentration in meditation is a form of self-centred improvement, it emphasizes action within the boundaries of the self, the ego, the 'me." Concentration is a process of narrowing down thought. (COL, 2, 236.)

There cannot be the experiencing of the unknown until the mind ceases to experience. Thought is the expression of experience; thought is a response of memory; and as long as thinking intervenes, there can be no experiencing. (COL, 1, 32.)

Naming only strengthens and gives continuity to the experiencer, to the desire for permanency, to the characteristic of particularizing memory. There must be silent awareness of naming, and so the understanding of it. We name not only to communicate, but also to give continuity and substance to an experience, to revive it and repeat its sensations. The naming process must cease, not only on the superficial levels of the mind, but throughout its entire structure. This is an arduous task, not to be easily understood or lightly experienced; for our whole consciousness is a process of naming or terming experience, and then storing or recording it. It is this process that gives nourishment and strength to the illusory entity, the experiencer as distinct from the experience. Without thoughts there is no thinker. Thoughts create the thinker, who isolates himself to give himself permanency: for thoughts are always impermanent. (COL, 1, 69.)

There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. Craving takes of different masks at different times, depending on its interests. The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, and so the chooser is born, establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving. But the entity is not different from its qualities. The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is understand himself. (COL, 1, 105.)

This centre of continuity is not a spiritual essence, for it is still within the field of thought, of memory, and so of time. It can experience only its own projection, and through its self-projected experience it gives itself further continuity. Thus, as long as it exists, it can never experience beyond itself. It must die; it must cease to give itself further continuity through idea, through memory, through word. Continuity is decay, and there is life only in death. There is renewal only with the cessation of the centre; then rebirth is not continuity; then death is as life, a renewal from moment to moment. This renewal is creation. (COL, 1, 90.)

Desire ... causes conflict. Desire is stimulated by association and remembrance; memory is part of desire. The recollection of the pleasant and the unpleasant nourishes desire and breaks it up into opposing and conflicting desires. The mind identifies itself with the pleasant as opposed to the unpleasant; through the choice of pain and pleasure the mind separates desire, dividing it into different categories of pursuits and values. (COL, 2, 119.)

The timeless is not with the time-binding quality of memory. The limitless is not to be measured by memory, but experience. There is the unnamable only when experience, knowledge, has wholly ceased. Truth alone frees the mind from its own bondage. (COL, 2, 108.)

Experience is the response to challenge. This response is conditioned by the past, by memory; such response only strengthens the conditioning. Experience does not liberate, it strengthens belief, memory, and it is this memory that responds to challenge; so experience is the conditioner. (COL, 1, 139.)

Experience is already in the net of time, it is already in the past, it has become a memory which comes to life only as a response to the present. Life is the present, it is not the experience. The weight and strength of experience shadow the present, and so experiencing becomes the experience. The mind is the experience, the known, and it can never be in the state of experiencing; for what it experiences is the continuation of experience. The mind only knows continuity, and it can never receive the new as long as its continuity exists. What is continuous can never be in a state of experiencing, which is a state without experience. Experience must cease for experiencing to be. (Krishnamurti, COL, 1, 32.)

Experiencing is direct, and not through memory. It is this direct relationship that brings understanding. Understanding brings freedom from conflict; and with freedom from conflict there is integration. (COL, 1, 109.)

The Mind - Is the self  See also the Self

The mind ... is the self. (COL, 1, 34.)

The self, at whatever level it is placed, is still of the mind. Whatever the mind can think about is the mind. The mind cannot think about something which is not of itself; it cannot think of the unknown. The self at any level is known; and though there may be layers of the self of which the superficial mind is not aware, they are still within the field of the known. (COL, 1, 68.)

The mind is like a machine that is working night and day, chattering, everlastingly busy whether asleep or awake. Another part of this intricate and complex mechanism tries to control the whole movement, and so begins the conflict between opposing desires, urges. One may be called the higher self and the other the lower self, but both are within the area of the mind, The action and reaction of the mind, of thought, are almost simultaneous and almost automatic. This whole conscious and unconscious process of accepting and denying, conforming and striving to be free, is extremely rapid. So the question is not how to control this complex machine, for control only brings friction and only dissipates energy. (COL, 2, 231.)

The mind is the product of environment, re-creating and sustaining itself on sensations and identifications; and that is why the mind clings to codes of conduct, patterns of thought, and so on. As long as the mind is the outcome of the past, it can never discover truth or allow truth to come into being. In holding to organizations it discards the search for truth. (COL, 1, 24.)

The Mind  Lives on sensations

Sensations are of the mind, as sexual appetites are. The mind breeds the appetite, the passion, through remembrance, from which it derives gratifying sensations. The mind is composed of differing and conflicting interests or desires, with their exclusive sensations; and they clash when one or the other begins to predominate, thus creating a problem. Sensations are both pleasant and unpleasant, and the mind holds to the pleasant, thus becoming a slave to them. The mind is the maker of problems and so we cannot resolve them. (COL, 1, 102.)

The Mind  The surface mind is given to obsessions

It is not good my rebelling against what is, the actual. The recognition of what is does not lead to smug contentment and ease. When I yield to what is, there is not only the understanding of it, but there also comes a certain quietness to the surface mind. If the surface mind is not quiet, it indulges in obsessions, actual or imaginary; it gets caught up in some social reform or religious conclusion: the Master, the saviour, the ritual, and so on. It is only when the surface mind is quiet that the hidden can reveal itself. The hidden must be exposed; but this is not possible if the surface mind is burdened with obsessions, worries. Since the surface mind is constantly in some kind of agitation, conflict is inevitable between the upper and the deeper levels of mind; and as long as this conflict is not resolved, obsessions increase. After all, obsessions are a means of escape from conflict. All escapes are similar, though it is obvious that some are socially more harmful.

When one is aware of the total process of obsession or of any other problem, only then is there freedom from the problem. To be extensively aware, there must be no condemnation or justification of the problem; awareness must be choiceless. To be so aware demands wide patience and sensitivity; it requires eagerness and sustained attention so that the whole process of thinking can be observed and understood. (COL, 1, 115-6.)

The upper and the deeper mind are not dissimilar; they are both made up of conclusions, memories, they are both the outcome of the past. They can supply an answer, a conclusion, but they are incapable of dissolving the problem. The problem is dissolved only when both the upper and the deeper mind are silent, when they are not projecting positive or negative conclusions. There is freedom from the problem only when the whole mind is utterly still, choicelessly aware of the problem; for only then the maker of the problem is not. (COL, 1, 137.)

The Mind - The experiencing of what is does not depend on thought

The understanding of what is does not depend upon thought, for thought itself is an escape. To think about the problem is not to understand it. It is only when the mind is silent that the truth of what is unfolds. (COL, 2, 41.)

Thought is binding; thought can only lead to the vast expanse of time, the field in which knowledge, action, virtue, have importance. (COL, 2, 167.)

Thought can only deny or assert, it cannot discover or search out the new. Thought cannot come upon the new; but when thought is silent, then there may be the new. (COL, 1, 44.)

Thought cannot penetrate into the unknown, and so it can never discover or experience reality. (COL, 1, 44.)

There cannot be the experiencing of the unknown until the mind ceases to experience. Thought is the expression of experience; thought is a response of memory; and as long as thinking intervenes, there can be no experiencing. (COL, 1, 32.)

The experiencing of the integral, unitary process frees the mind from its dualism. Thus the total process of the mind, the open as well as the hidden, is experienced and understood -- not piece by piece, activity by activity, but in its entirety. (COL, 1, 69.)

If this silence were an illusion the mind would have had some relationship to it, it would either reject it or cling to it, reason it away or with subtle satisfaction identify itself with it; but since it has no relationship to this silence, the mind cannot accept or deny it. The mind can operate only with its own projections, with the things which are of itself; but it has no relationship with the things that are not of its own origin. The silence is not of the mind, and so the mind cannot cultivate or become identified with it. The content of this silence is not to be measured by words. (COL, 1, 58.)

The mind was not functioning; it was alert and passive, and though cognizant of the breeze playing among the leaves, there was no movement of any kind within itself. There was no observer who measured and observed. There was only THAT, and THAT was aware of itself without measure. It had no beginning and no word. (COL, 2, 242.)

The Mind  It must be purged at all levels

It is the mind with its demands and fears, its attachments and denials, its determinations and urges, that destroys love. (COL, 2, 223.)

We love with our minds and not with our hearts. Mind can modify itself, but love cannot. Mind can make itself invulnerable, but love cannot; mind can always withdraw, be exclusive, become personal or impersonal. Love is not to be compared and hedged about. Our difficulty lies in that which we call love, which is really of the mind. We fill our hearts with the things of the mind and so keep our hearts ever empty and expectant. It is the mind that clings, that is envious, that holds and destroys. Our life is dominated by the physical centres and by the mind. We do not love and let it alone, but crave to be loved; we give in order to receive, which is the generosity of the mind and not of the heart. The mind is ever seeking certainty, security; and can love be made certain by the mind? Can the mind, whose very essence is of time, catch love, which is its own eternity? (COL, 1, 41.)

The totality of love is not within the measure of the mind; and to know that totality, the mind must be empty of its occupations, however noble or self-centred. To ask how to empty the mind, or how not to be self-centred, is to pursue a method; and the pursuit of a method is another occupation of the mind. (COL, 3, 85-6.)

When the mind purges itself of all thought, only then is there the silence of creation. The mind is not tranquil as long as it is traveling in order to arrive. For the mind, to arrive is to succeed, and success is ever the same, whether at the beginning or at the end. There is no purgation of the mind if it is weaving the pattern of its own becoming. (COL, 2, 19-20.)

Without emptying the mind there can be no renewal. (COL, 1, 67.)

The mind must be utterly empty to receive; but the craving to be empty in order to receive is a deep-seated impediment, and this also must be understood completely, not at any particular level. The craving to experience must wholly cease, which happens only when the experiencer is not nourishing himself on experiences and their memories. (COL, 1, 69.)

Awareness must go into the deeper layers of consciousness and not be content with surface responses. (COL, 1, 31.)

There is freedom when the entire being, the superficial as well as the hidden, is purged of the past. Will is desire; and if there is any action of the will, any effort to be free, to denude oneself, then there can never be freedom, the total purgation of the whole being. When all the many layers of consciousness are quiet, utterly still, only then is there the immeasurable, the bliss that is not of time, the renewal of creation. (COL, 1, 69.)

The purgation of the mind must take place not only on its upper levels, but also in its hidden depths; and this can happen only when the naming or terming process comes to an end. Naming only strengthens and gives continuity to the experiencer, to the desire for permanency, to the characteristic of particularizing memory. There must be silent awareness of naming, and so the understanding of it. We name not only to communicate, but also to give continuity and substance to an experience, to revive it and repeat its sensations. The naming process must cease, not only on the superficial levels of the mind, but throughout its entire structure. This is an arduous task, not to be easily understood or lightly experienced; for our whole consciousness is a process of naming or terming experience, and then storing or recording it. It is this process that gives nourishment and strength to the illusory entity, the experiencer as distinct from the experience. Without thoughts there is no thinker. Thoughts create the thinker, who isolates himself to give himself permanency: for thoughts are always impermanent. (COL, 1, 69.)

The experiencing of the integral, unitary process frees the mind from its dualism. Thus the total process of the mind, the open as well as the hidden, is experienced and understood  not piece by piece, activity by activity, but in its entirety. Then dreams and everyday activities are ever an emptying process. The mind must be utterly empty to receive; but the craving to be empty in order to receive is a deep-seated impediment, and this also must be understood completely, not at any particular level. The craving to experience must wholly cease, which happens only when the experiencer is not nourishing himself on experiences and their memories. (COL, 1, 69.)

The purgation of the mind is tranquillity of heart. (COL, 2, 23.)

When the mind is entirely free of this structure of desire, is the mind then different from the void? (COL, 3, 37.)

The Mind  The mind must be quiet without being made to be

For most people, a quiet mind is a rather fearsome thing; they are afraid to be quiet, for heaven knows what they may discover in themselves and worry is a preventative. A mind that is afraid to discover must ever be on the defensive, and restlessness is its defence. (COL, 1, 14.)

A restless mind must have a changing variety of expressions and actions, it must be occupied; it must have ever-increasing sensations, passing interests. (COL, 1, 13.)

The mind is not quiet when it is acquiring or becoming. All acquisition is conflict; all becoming is a process of isolation. The mind is not quiet when it is disciplined, controlled and checked; such a mind is a dead mind, it is isolating itself through various forms of resistance, and it inevitably creates misery for itself and others.
What is essential is self-knowledge, which brings about a still mind. (COL, 2, 239.)

Self-knowledge comes with the slowing down of the mind, but that doesn't mean forcing the mind to be slow. Compulsion only makes for resistance, and there must be no dissipation of energy in the slowing down of the mind. (COL, 2, 231.)

The mind is quiet only when it is not caught in thought, which is the net of its own activity. When the mind is still, not made still, a true factor, love, comes into being. (COL, 2, 32.)

The mind had no recollection of previous stillnesses, of those silences it had known; it did not say, "This is tranquillity." There was no verbalization, which is only the recognition and the affirmation of a somewhat similar experience. Because there was no verbalization, thought was absent. There was no recording, and therefore thought was not able to pick up the silence or to think about it; for the word "stillness" is not stillness. When the word is not, the mind cannot operate, and so the experiencer cannot store up as a means of further pleasure. There was no gathering process at work, nor was there approximation or assimilation. The movement of the mind was totally absent. (COL, 1, 57.)

There is this stillness, not when the thinker comes to an end, but only when thought itself has come to an end. (COL, 2, 67.)

Naming  The naming process must cease

We name not only to communicate, but also to give continuity and substance to an experience, to revive it and to repeat its sensations. This naming process must cease, not only on the superficial levels of the mind, but throughout its entire structure. This is an arduous task, not to be easily understood or lightly experienced; for our whole consciousness is a process of naming and terming experience, and then storing or recording it. It is this process that gives nourishment and strength to the illusory entity, the experiencer as distinct and separate from the experience. (COL, 1, 69.)

The purgation of the mind must take place not only on its upper levels, but also in its hidden depths; and this can happen only when the naming or terming process comes to an end. Naming only strengthens and gives continuity to the experiencer, to the desire for permanency, to the characteristic of particularizing memory. There must be silent awareness of naming, and so the understanding of it. We name not only to communicate, but also to give continuity and substance to an experience, to revive it and repeat its sensations. The naming process must cease, not only on the superficial levels of the mind, but throughout its entire structure. This is an arduous task, not to be easily understood or lightly experienced; for our whole consciousness is a process of naming or terming experience, and then storing or recording it. It is this process that gives nourishment and strength to the illusory entity, the experiencer as distinct from the experience. Without thoughts there is no thinker. Thoughts create the thinker, who isolates himself to give himself permanency: for thoughts are always impermanent. (COL, 1, 69.)

The Now

The sacrificing of the present to the future is the insanity of those who are power-mad. (COL, 1, 75.)

The now has greater significance than the tomorrow. In the now is all time, and to understand the now is to be free of time. Becoming is the continuance of time, or sorrow. Becoming does not contain being. Being is always in the present, and being is the highest form of transformation. Becoming is merely modified continuity, and there is radical transformation only in the present, in being. (COL, 1, 11.)

Observer and observed a unitary process

If there is not evaluation, no screen, between the observer and the observed, is there then a separation, a division between them? Is not the observer the observed? (COL, 2, 232.)

The phenomenon of the observer and the observed is not a dual process, but a single one; and only in experiencing the fact of this unitary process is there freedom from desire, from conflict. The question of how to experience this fact should never arise. It must happen; and it happens only when there is alertness and passive awareness. (COL, 1, 61.)

The experiencing of the integral, unitary process frees the mind from its dualism. Thus the total process of the mind, the open as well as the hidden, is experienced and understood  not piece by piece, activity by activity, but in its entirety. Then dreams and everyday activities are ever an emptying process. The mind must be utterly empty to receive; but the craving to be empty in order to receive is a deep-seated impediment, and this also must be understood completely, not at any particular level. The craving to experience must wholly cease, which happens only when the experiencer is not nourishing himself on experiences and their memories. (COL, 1, 69.)

Obsessions  See The Mind  Surface mind given to obsessions

The One and the Many

The one does not come into being until the many cease. (COL, 1, 37.)

Ownership  See Attachments

Passive Awareness  Its nature and ways  See also Choicelessness

To be extensively aware, there must be no condemnation or justification of the problem; awareness must be choiceless. To be so aware demands wide patience and sensitivity; it requires eagerness and sustained attention so that the whole process of thinking can be observed and understood. (COL, 1, 115-6.)

Simplicity is the alert, passive awareness in which the experiencer is not recording the experience. Self-analysis prevents this negative awareness; in analysis there is always a motive  to be free, to understand, to gain  and this desire only emphasizes self-consciousness. Likewise, introspective conclusions arrest self-knowledge. (COL, I, 80.)

The truth of experience does not depend on personal idiosyncrasies and fancies; the truth of it is perceived only when there is awareness without condemnation, justification, or any form of identification. (COL, 1, 93-4.)

Wisdom is the understanding of what is from moment to moment, without the accumulation of experience and knowledge. What is accumulated does not give freedom to understand, and without freedom there is no discovery; and it is this endless discovery that makes for wisdom. Wisdom is ever new, ever fresh, and there is no means of gathering it. The means destroys the freshness, the newness, the spontaneous discovery. (COL, 1, 96.)

Choiceless awareness of the manner of your approach will bring right relationship with the problem. The problem is self-created, so there must be self-knowledge. You and the problem are one, not two separate processes. You are the problem. (COL, 1, 99.)

Passive Awareness  How it works

If you see that silent observation, passive awareness is essential for understanding, then the truth of your perception liberates you from the background. It is only when you do not see the immediate necessity of passive and yet alert awareness that the how, the search for a means to dissolve the background, arises. It is truth that liberates, not the means or the system. The truth that silent observation alone brings understanding, must be seen; then only are you free from condemnation and justification. (COL, 1, 122-3.)

To understand what is, there must be freedom from all distraction. Distraction is the condemnation or justification of what is. Distraction is comparison; it is resistance or discipline against the actual. Distraction is the very effort or compulsion to understand. All distractions are a hindrance to the swift pursuit of what is. What is is not static; it is in constant movement, and to follow it the mind must not be tethered to any belief, to any hope of success or fear of failure. Only in passive yet alert awareness can that which is unfold. This unfoldment is not of time. (COL, 1, 127.)

Passive Awareness  In it, the thinker is not

In passive watchfulness ... the thinker is not. (COL, 2, 27.)

You must be completely denuded, without the weight of the past or the enticement of a hopeful future -- which does not mean despair. If you are in despair, there is not emptiness, no nakedness. You cannot 'do' anything. You can and must be still, without any hope, longing, or desire; but you cannot determine to be still, suppressing all noise, for in that very effort there is noise. Silence is not the opposite of noise. (COL, 2, 115.)

Passive Awareness  Is the beginning of meditation

Awareness, without any choice, of the ways of the mind, is the beginning of meditation. (COL, 1, 84.)

Be passively watchful of your habitual responses; simply be aware of them without resisting; passively watch them as you would watch a child, without the pleasure or distaste of identification. Passive watchfulness itself is freedom from defence, from closing the door. (COL, 2, 90.)

Passive Awareness  Is love

Righteousness is in purely looking, which is attention without the distortion of measure and idea. ... To look without distortion is love, and the action of that perception is the action of virtue. (SPKR, 229.)

When you know you do not love, when you are choicelessly aware of that fact, then there is a possibility of transformation. (COL, 1, 95.)

Passive Awareness  Cannot be gathered or developed

You must be completely denuded, without the weight of the past or the enticement of a hopeful future -- which does not mean despair. If you are in despair, there is not emptiness, no nakedness. You cannot 'do' anything. You can and must be still, without any hope, longing, or desire; but you cannot determine to be still, suppressing all noise, for in that very effort there is noise. Silence is not the opposite of noise. (COL, 2, 115.)

You want to possess a still mind, as you would possess a dress or a house. Having a new objective, the stillness of the mind, you begin to inquire into the ways and means of getting it, so you have another problem on your hands. Just be aware of the utter necessity and importance of a still mind. Don't struggle after stillness, don't torture yourself with discipline in order to acquire it, don't cultivate or practise it. All these efforts produce a result, and that which is a result is not stillness. What is put together can be undone. Do not seek continuity of stillness. Stillness is to be experienced from moment to moment; it cannot be gathered. (COL, 2, 212-3.)

Passive Awareness  Many do not want it

Consciously or unconsciously we refuse to see the essentiality of being passively aware because we do not really want to let go of our problems; for what would we be without them? We would rather cling to something we know, however painful, than risk the pursuit of something that may lead who knows where. With the problems, at least, we are familiar; but the though of pursuing the maker of them, not knowing where it may lead, creates in us fear and dullness. The mind would be lost without the worry of problems; it feeds on problems, whether they are world or kitchen problems, political or personal, religious or ideological; so our problems make us petty and narrow. A mind that is consumed with world problems is as petty as the mind that worries about the spiritual progress it is making. Problems burden the mind with fear, for problems give strength to the self, to the me and the mine. Without problems, without achievements and failures, the self is not. (COL, 1, 123.)

Passive Awareness  Needs constant and extensive vigilance

To be aware which are and which are not the activities of the self needs constant vigilance. This vigilance is not disciplined attention, but an extensive awareness that is choiceless. Disciplined attention gives strength to the self; it becomes a substitute and a dependence. Awareness, on the other hand, is not self-induced, nor is it the outcome of practice; it is understanding the whole content of the problem, the hidden as well as the superficial. The surface must be understood for the hidden to show itself ; the hidden cannot be exposed if the surface mind is not quiet. The whole process is not verbal, nor is it a matter of mere experience. Verbalization indicates dullness of mind; and experience, being cumulative, makes for repetitiousness. Awareness is not a matter of determination, for purposive direction is resistance, which tends towards exclusiveness. Awareness is the silent and choiceless observation of what is; in this awareness the problem unrolls itself, and this it is fully and completely understood. (COL, 1, 101.)

Passive Awareness  Only it can bring thought to a standstill

The desire to experience truth must be searched out and understood; but if there is motive in the search, then truth does not come into being. Can there be search without a motive, conscious or unconscious? With a motive, is there search? If you already know what you want, if you have formulated an end, then search is a means to achieve that end, which is self-projected. Then search is for gratification. The understanding of what is needs no motive; the motive and the means prevent understanding. Search, which is choiceless awareness, is not for something; it is to be aware of the craving for an end and of the means to it. This choiceless awareness brings an understanding of what is. (COL, 1, 89.)

The mind is empty only when thought is not. Thought cannot come to an end save through passive watchfulness of every thought. (COL, 2, 27.)

The movements of the self are revealed in the action of relationship; and when relationship is not confined with a pattern, it gives an opportunity for self-revelation. Relationship is the action of the self, and to understand this action there must be awareness without choice; for to choose is to emphasize one interest against another. This awareness is the experiencing of the action of the self, and in this experiencing there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. (COL, 1, 68.)

Passive Awareness  Only it can reveal what is

The phenomenon of the observer and the observed is not a dual process, but a single one; and only in experiencing the fact of this unitary process is there freedom from desire, from conflict. The question of how to experience this fact should never arise. It must happen; and it happens only when there is alertness and passive awareness. (COL, 1, 61.)

The what is can be understood only when the mind is utterly passive, when it is not operating on what is. (COL, 2, 63.)

Choiceless awareness ... is not for something; it is to be aware of the craving for an end and of the means to it. This choiceless awareness brings an understanding of what is. (COL, 1, 89.)

Awareness of the ways of desire is self-knowledge. (COL, 2, 66-7.)

Self-knowledge comes into being through awareness of the moment-by-moment responses to the movement of life. Will shuts off these spontaneous responses, which alone reveal the structure of the self. Will is the very essence of desire; and to the understanding of desire, will becomes a hindrance. Will in any form, whether or the upper mind or of the deep-rooted desires, can never be passive; and it is only in passivity, in alert silence, that truth can be. (COL, I, 79-80.)

The phenomenon of the observer and the observed is not a dual process, but a single one; and only in experiencing the fact of this unitary process is there freedom from desire, from conflict. The question of how to experience this fact should never arise. It must happen; and it happens only when there is alertness and passive awareness. (COL, 1, 61.)

Passive Awareness - Examples of it

The mind was not functioning; it was alert and passive, and though cognizant of the breeze playing among the leaves, there was no movement of any kind within itself. There was no observer who measured and observed. There was only THAT, and THAT was aware of itself without measure. It had no beginning and no word. (COL, 2, 242.)

The mind had no recollection of previous stillnesses, of those silences it had known; it did not say, "This is tranquillity." There was no verbalization, which is only the recognition and the affirmation of a somewhat similar experience. Because there was no verbalization, thought was absent. There was no recording, and therefore thought was not able to pick up the silence or to think about it; for the word "stillness" is not stillness. When the word is not, the mind cannot operate, and so the experiencer cannot store up as a means of further pleasure. There was no gathering process at work, nor was there approximation or assimilation. The movement of the mind was totally absent. (COL, 1, 57.)

The Past, Present and Future

The past is the known, and the response of the past is ever overshadowing the present, the unknown. The unknown is not the future, but the present. The future is but the past pushing its way through the uncertain present. This gap, this interval, is filled with the intermittent light of knowledge, covering the emptiness of the present; but this emptiness holds the miracle of life. (COL, 1, 26.)

You must be completely denuded, without the weight of the past or the enticement of a hopeful future -- which does not mean despair. If you are in despair, there is not emptiness, no nakedness. You cannot 'do' anything. You can and must be still, without any hope, longing, or desire; but you cannot determine to be still, suppressing all noise, for in that very effort there is noise. Silence is not the opposite of noise. (COL, 2, 115.)

The Past  Reality can be understood only with the fading of the past

Remembrance shuts off the sweep of silence, and a mind that is caught in experience cannot be silent. Time, the movement of yesterday flowing into to-day and to-morrow, is not silence. With the cessation of this movement there is silence, and only then can that which is unnameable come into being. (COL, 2, 77.)

What is has to be discovered, not verbally, theoretically, but directly experienced. ... To understand it, must you not come with a fresh mind, unclouded by memories, by habitual responses? (COL, 2, 104.)

There is freedom when the entire being, the superficial as well as the hidden, is purged of the past. (COL, 1, 69.)

Experience is already in the net of time, it is already in the past, it has become a memory which comes to life only as a response to the present. Life is the present, it is not the experience. The weight and strength of experience shadow the present, and so experiencing becomes the experience. The mind is the experience, the known, and it can never be in the state of experiencing; for what it experiences is the continuation of experience. The mind only knows continuity, and it can never receive the new as long as its continuity exists. What is continuous can never be in a state of experiencing, which is a state without experience. Experience must cease for experiencing to be. (Krishnamurti, COL, 1, 32.)

The experiencing of the integral, unitary process frees the mind from its dualism. Thus the total process of the mind, the open as well as the hidden, is experienced and understood  not piece by piece, activity by activity, but in its entirety. Then dreams and everyday activities are ever an emptying process. The mind must be utterly empty to receive; but the craving to be empty in order to receive is a deep-seated impediment, and this also must be understood completely, not at any particular level. The craving to experience must wholly cease, which happens only when the experiencer is not nourishing himself on experiences and their memories. (COL, 1, 69.)

The Pattern  See the Ideal, Pattern, or Conclusion

Pose  See Spontaneity  Is not pose

Possessions  See Attachments

Problems  They remind us we are alive

In the search for happiness, we create problems and in them we get caught. (COL, 1, 100.)

Problems will always exist where the activities of the self are dominant. (COL, 1, 101.)

If we did not worry, most of us would feel that we were not alive; to be struggling with a problem is for the majority of us an indication of existence. ... The constant tension over a problem which thought itself has created only dulls the mind, making it insensitive and weary. (COL, 1, 14.)

Problems  The problem is important, not the answer

The problem is the important thing, not the answer. If we look for an answer, we will find it; but the problem will persist, for the answer is irrelevant to the problem. Our search is for an escape from the problem, and the solution is a superficial remedy, so there is no understanding of the problem. All problems arise from one source, and without understanding the source, any attempt to solve the problems will only lead to further confusion and misery. One must first be very clear that ones intention to understand the problem is serious, that one sees the necessity of being free of all problems; for only then can the maker of problems be approached. Without freedom from problems, there cam be no tranquility; and tranquility is essential for happiness, which is not an end in itself. As the pool is still when the breezes stop, so the mind is still with the cessation of problems. But the mind cannot be made still; if it is, it is dead, it is a stagnant pool. When this is clear, then the maker of problems can be observed. The observation must be silent and not according to any predetermined plan based on pleasure and pain. (COL, 1, 122.)

How eager we are to solve our problems! How insistently we search for an answer, a way out, a remedy! We never consider the problem itself, but with agitation and anxiety grope for an answer which is invariably self-projected. Though the problem is self-created, we try to find an answer away from it. To look for an answer is to avoid the problem - -which is just what most of us want to do. Then the answer becomes all-significant, and not the problem. The solution is not separate from the problem; the answer is in the problem, not away from it. (COL, 1, 98.)

Problems  Passive awareness essential to understanding them

Consciously or unconsciously we refuse to see the essentiality of being passively aware because we do not really want to let go of our problems; for what would we be without them? We would rather cling to something we know, however painful, than risk the pursuit of something that may lead who knows where. With the problems, at least, we are familiar; but the though of pursuing the maker of them, not knowing where it may lead, creates in us fear and dullness. The mind would be lost without the worry of problems; it feeds on problems, whether they are world or kitchen problems, political or personal, religious or ideological; so our problems make us petty and narrow. A mind that is consumed with world problems is as petty as the mind that worries about the spiritual progress it is making. Problems burden the mind with fear, for problems give strength to the self, to the me and the mine. Without problems, without achievements and failures, the self is not. (COL, 1, 123.)

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem. This freedom gives the ease of full attention; the mind is not distracted by any secondary issues. As long as there is conflict with or opposition to the problem, there can be no understanding of it; for this conflict is a distraction. There is understanding only when there is communion, and communion is impossible as long as there is resistance or contention, fear or acceptance. One must establish right relationship with the problem, which is the beginning of understanding; but how can there be right relationship with a problem when you are concerned with getting rid of it, which is to find a solution for it? Right relationship means communion, and communion cannot exist if there is positive or negative resistance. The approach to the problem is more important than the problems itself; the approach shapes the problem, the end. The means and the end are not different from the approach. The approach decides the fate of the problem. How you regard the problem is of the greatest importance, because your attitude and prejudices, your fears and hopes will colour it. Choiceless awareness of the manner of your approach will bring right relationship with the problem. The problem is self-created, so there must be self-knowledge. You and the problem are one, not two separate processes. You are the problem. (COL, 1, 99.)

Awareness is the silent and choiceless observation of what is; in this awareness the problem unrolls itself, and this it is fully and completely understood. (COL, 1, 101.)

A problem is never solved on its own level; being complex, it must be understood in its total process. To try to solve a problem on only one level, physical or psychological, leads to further conflict and confusion. For the resolution of a problem, there must be this awareness, this passive alertness which reveals its total process. (COL, 1, 101-2.)

The upper and the deeper mind are not dissimilar; they are both made up of conclusions, memories, they are both the outcome of the past. They can supply an answer, a conclusion, but they are incapable of dissolving the problem. The problem is dissolved only when both the upper and the deeper mind are silent, when they are not projecting positive or negative conclusions. There is freedom from the problem only when the whole mind is utterly still, choicelessly aware of the problem; for only then the maker of the problem is not. (COL, 1, 137.)

Purgation of Desire  See Desire  Silence comes with the absence or purgation of desire

The Real  Its nature and ways

The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation that is of supreme importance. (COL, 1, 52.)

What is can be understood only with the fading of tomorrow. (COL, 1, 52.)

Reality has no continuity; it is from moment to moment, ever new, ever fresh. What has continuity can never be creative. (COL, 1, 45.)

Reality is not to be spoken of; and when it is, it is no longer reality. (COL, 1, 45.)

Reality cannot be sought; it is when the seeker is not. (COL, 2, 167.)

It is only when the experiencer ceases that there is the creative movement of the real. (COL, 2, 232.)

Experience is not reality. Reality cannot be experienced. It is. If the experiencer thinks he experiences reality, then he knows only illusion. ... Experience cannot meet reality. Experience shapes knowledge, and knowledge bends experience; they must both cease for reality to be. (COL, 1, 74.)

We like the illusion better than the actual; the idea is more appealing, more satisfying, and so we cling to it. Thus the illusion becomes the real and the actual becomes the false, and in this conflict between the so-called real and the so-called false we are caught. (COL, 1, 86.)

Relationship  There is no relationship where we use each other

When we use each other for mutual gratification, can there be any relationship between us? is possession relationship? When we use man for a purpose, however noble, we want him as an instrument, a dead thing. The use of another makes that person the dead instrument of our gratification.

Relationship can exist only between the living, and usage is a process of isolation. It is this isolating process that breeds conflict, antagonism between man and man. (COL, 2, 30-1.)

Existence is relationship; to be is to be related. Relationship- is society. Relationship is communion; and how can there be communion if there is exploitation? Exploitation implies fear, and fear inevitably leads to all kinds of illusions and misery. Conflict exists only in exploitation and not in relationship. Conflict, opposition, enmity, exists between us when there is the use of another as a means of pleasure, of achievement. conflict in any form destroys relationship, understanding. There is understanding only when the mind is quiet; and the mind is not quiet when it is held in any ideology, dogma or beliefm, or when it is bound to the pattern of its own experience, memories. (COL, 2, 31-2.)

Relationship  Is communion

Isolation is the outcome of fear, and fear puts an end to all communion. Communion is relationship; and however pleasurable or painful relationship may be, it is there that there is the possibility of self-forgetfulness. Isolation is the way of the self, and all activity of the self brings conflict and sorrow. (COL, 1, 78.)

If I use you for my happiness, am I really related to you? Relationship implies communion with another on different levels; and is there communion with another when he is only a tool, a means of my happiness? (COL, 1, 101.)

Communion can exist only where there is no fear; and there is gnawing fear and pain where there is usage and so dependence. As nothing can live in isolation, the attempts of the mind to isolate itself lead to its own frustration and misery. To escape from this sense of incompleteness, we seek completeness in ideas, in people, in things; and so we are back again where we started, in the search for substitutes. (COL, 1, 101.)

Relationship  Until there is love, relationship is pain

Through usage we wear ourselves out, and that which was sharp and clear becomes wearisome and confused. Through constant friction, hope, and frustration, that which was beautiful and simple becomes fearful and expectant. Relationship is complex and difficult, and few can come out of it unscathed. Though we would like it to be static, enduring, continuous, relationship is a movement, a process which must be deeply and fully understood and not made to conform to an inner our outer pattern. Conformity, which is the social structure, loses its weight and authority only when there is love. Love in relationship is a purifying process as it reveals the ways of the self. Without this revelation, relationship has little significance.

But how we struggle against this revelation! The struggle takes many forms: dominance or subservience, fear or hope, jealousy or acceptance, and so on and on. The difficulty is that we do not love; and if we do love we want it to function in a particular way, we do not give it freedom. We love with our minds and not with our hearts. Mind can modify itself, but love cannot. Mind can make itself invulnerable, but love cannot; mind can always withdraw, be exclusive, become personal or impersonal. Love is not to be compared and hedged about.

Our difficulty lies in that which we call love, which is really of the mind. We fill our hearts with the things of the mind and so keep our hearts ever empty and expectant. It is the mind that clings, that is envious, that holds and destroys. Our life is dominated by the physical centres and by the mind. We do not love and let it alone, but crave to be loved; we give in order to receive, which is the generosity of the mind and not of the heart. The mind is ever seeking certainty, security; and can love be made certain by the mind? Can the mind, whose very essence is of time, catch love, which is its own eternity? (COL, 1, 41.)

Our greatest difficulty is to be widely and deeply aware that there is no means to love as a desirable end of the mind. When we understand this really and profoundly, then there is a possibility of receiving something that is not of this world. Without the touch of that something, do what we will, there can be no lasting happiness in relationship. (COL, 1, 42.)

Until there is that love which is not of my making, relationship is pain. If there is the benediction of that love, you cannot but love me whatever I may be, for then you do not shape love according to my behavior. (COL, 1, 42.)

Relationship  Reveals the ways of the Self

The movements of the self are revealed in the action of relationship; and when relationship is not confined with a pattern, it gives an opportunity for self-revelation. Relationship is the action of the self, and to understand this action there must be awareness without choice; for to choose is to emphasize one interest against another. This awareness is the experiencing of the action of the self, and in this experiencing there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. (COL, 1, 68.)

Self-knowledge is to be discovered in the action of relationship. Self-knowledge does not come about through self-isolation, through withdrawal; the denial of relationship is death. Death is the ultimate resistance. Resistance, which is suppression, substitution or sublimation in any form, is a hindrance to the flow of self-knowledge; but resistance is to be discovered in relationship, in action. Resistance, whether negative or positive, with its comparisons and justifications, its condemnations and identifications, is the denial of what is. (COL, 1, 47.)

Repression  See Suppression, Repression

Resistance

What you conquer has to be conquered again and again, but there is freedom from that which is fully understood. To understand, there must be awareness of the process of resistance. To resist is much easier than to understand; and besides, we are reeducated to resist. In resistance there need be no observation, no consideration, no communication; resistance is an indication of the dullness of the mind. A mind that resists is self-enclosed and so is incapable of sensitivity, of understanding. To understand the ways of resistance is far more important than to get rid of greed. (COL, 1, 118.)

Safety, Security, Permanence

Identification gives pleasure and power. In the name of the Master, pleasure and power have become respectable. You are no longer lonely, confused, lost; you belong to him, to the party, the idea. You are safe. (COL, 1, 74.)

What most of us want: [is] to be safe, to be secure. To be lost with the many is a form of psychological security; to be identified with a group or with an idea, secular or spiritual, is to feel safe. That is why most of us cling to nationalism, even though it brings increasing destruction and misery; that is why organized religion has such a strong hold on people, even though it divides and breeds antagonism. The craving for individual or group security brings on destruction, and to be safe psychologically engenders illusion. Our life is illusion and misery, with rare moments of clarity and joy, so anything that promises a haven we eagerly accept. (COL, 1, 74.)

What has continuity can never be other than that which it is, with certain modifications; but those modifications do not give it a newness. It may take on a different cloak, a different colour; but it is still the idea, the memory, the word. (COL, 1, 90.)

Positive and negative continuance are similar. The gathering centre is desire, the desire for the more or the less. This centre is the self, placed at different levels according to one's conditioning. Any activity of this centre only brings about the further continuity of itself. (COL, 2, 108.)

The search for permanency is the everlasting cry of self-fulfillment; but the self can never fulfill, the self is impermanent, and that in which it fulfils must also be impermanent. Self-continuity is decay; in it there is no transforming element nor the breath of the new. The self must end for the new to be. The self is the idea, the pattern, the bundle of memories; and each fulfillment is the further continuity of idea, of experience. Experience is always conditioning; the experiencer is ever separating and differentiating himself from experience. So there must be freedom from experience, from the desire to experience. Fulfillment is the way of covering up inward poverty, emptiness, and in fulfillment there is sorrow and pain. (COL, 1, 87.)

Search

We do not search out reality, but go after gratification and sensation. (COL, 1, 117.)

Truth comes into being when gratification, the desire for sensation, comes to an end. (COL, 1, 117.)

The desire to experience truth must be searched out and understood; but if there is motive in the search, then truth does not come into being. Can there be search without a motive, conscious or unconscious? With a motive, is there search? If you already know what you want, if you have formulated an end, then search is a means to achieve that end, which is self-projected. Then search is for gratification. The understanding of what is needs no motive; the motive and the means prevent understanding. Search, which is choiceless awareness, is not for something; it is to be aware of the craving for an end and of the means to it. This choiceless awareness brings an understanding of what is. (COL, 1, 89.)

The Self  See also The Mind

The self, at whatever level it is placed, is still of the mind. Whatever the mind can think about is of the mind. The mind cannot think about something which is not of itself; it cannot think of the unknown. The self at any level is the known; and though there may be layers of the self of which the superficial mind is not aware, they are still within the field of the known. (COL, 1, 68.)

Positive and negative continuance are similar. The gathering centre is desire, the desire for the more or the less. This centre is the self, placed at different levels according to one's conditioning. Any activity of this centre only brings about the further continuity of itself. (COL, 2, 108.)

There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. Craving takes of different masks at different times, depending on its interests. The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, and so the chooser is born, establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving. But the entity is not different from its qualities. The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is understand himself. (COL, 1, 105.)

YOU are this knowledge, you are the things that you have accumulated; you are the gramophone record that is ever repeating what is impressed on it. You are the song, the noise, the chatter of society, of your culture. Is there an uncorrupted 'you' apart from all this clatter? This self-centre is now anxious to free itself from the things it has gathered; but the effort it makes to free itself is part of the accumulative process. You have a new record to play, with new words, but your mind is still dull, insensitive. (COL, 3, 86.)

The activities of the self are frighteningly monotonous. The self is a bore; it is intrinsically enervating, pointless, futile. Its opposing and conflicting desires, its hopes and frustrations, its realities and illusions are enthralling, and yet empty; its activities lead to its own weariness. The self is ever climbing and ever falling down, ever pursuing and ever being frustrated, ever gaining and ever losing; and from this weary round of futility it is ever trying to escape. It escapes through outward activity or through gratifying illusions, through drink, sex, radio, books, knowledge, amusements, and so on. Its power to breed illusion is complex and vast. These illusions are home-made, self-projected; they are the ideal, the idolatrous conception of Masters and saviours, the future as a means of self-aggrandizement, and so on. In trying to escape from its own monotony, the self pursues inward and outward sensations and excitements. These are the substitutes for self-abnegation, and in the substitutes it hopefully tries to get lost. It often succeeds, but the success only increases its own weariness. (COL, 1, 100.)

There is no means of forgetting the self. The inner or outward noise can suppress the self, but it soon comes up again in an different form. (COL, 1, 100.)

The self, in its very structure, is contradictory; it is made up of many entities with different masks, each in opposition to the others. The whole fabric of the self is the result of contradictory interests and values, of many varying desires at different levels of its being; and these desires all beget their own opposites. The self, the me, is a network of complex desires, each desire having its own impetus and aim, often in opposition to other hopes and pursuits. These masks are taken on according to stimulating circumstances and sensations; so within the structure of the self, contradiction is inevitable. This contradiction within us breeds illusion and pain, and to escape from it we resort to all manner of self-deceptions which only increase our conflict and misery. When the inner contradiction becomes unbearable, consciously or unconsciously we try to escape through death, through insanity; or we give ourselves over to an idea, to a group, to a country, to some activity that will completely absorb our being; or we turn to organized religion, with its dogmas and rituals. So this split in ourselves leads either to further self-expansion or to self-destruction, insanity. Trying to be other than what we are cultivates contradiction; the fear of what is breeds the illusion of its opposite, and in the pursuit of the opposite we hope to escape from fear. Synthesis is not the cultivation of the opposite; synthesis does not come about through opposition, for all opposites contain the elements of their own opposites. The one-pointed pursuit of a single desire, of a particular interest, leads to self-enclosing opposition. Contradiction within brings conflict without, and conflict indicates contradiction. Only through understanding the ways of desire is there freedom from self-contradiction. (COL, 1, 107.)

We cling to this process of self-consciousness in spite of its passing joys, its unending conflict, confusion and misery. This is what we know; this is our existence, the continuity of our very being, the idea, the memory, the word.

This centre of continuity is not a spiritual essence, for it is still within the field of thought, of memory, and so of time. It can experience only its own projection, and through its self-projected experience it gives itself further continuity. Thus, as long as it exists, it can never experience beyond itself. It must die; it must cease to give itself further continuity through idea, through memory, through word. Continuity is decay, and there is life only in death. There is renewal only with the cessation of the centre; then rebirth is not continuity; then death is as life, a renewal from moment to moment. This renewal is creation. (COL, 1, 90.)

Self-continuity is decay; in it there is no transforming element nor the breath of the new. The self must end for the new to be. The self is the idea, the pattern, the bundle of memories; and each fulfillment is the further continuity of idea, of experience. Experience is always conditioning; the experiencer is ever separating and differentiating himself from experience. So there must be freedom from experience, from the desire to experience. Fulfillment is the way of covering up inward poverty, emptiness, and in fulfillment there is sorrow and pain. (COL, 1, 87.)

Self-expansion, Self-importance  See Becoming

Self-Knowledge

Truth or happiness cannot come without undertaking the journey into the ways of the self. (COL, 1, 13.)

Without first knowing yourself, how can you know that which is true? Illusion is inevitable without self-knowledge. (COL, 1, 20.)

The denial of thought does not bring about love. There is freedom from thought only when its deep significance is fully understood; and for this, profound self-knowledge is essential, not vain and superficial assertions. Meditation and not repetition, awareness and not definition, reveal the ways of thought. Without being aware and experiencing the ways of thought, love cannot be. (COL, 1, 17.)

Without self-knowledge, action has very little significance. (COL, 1, 24.)

Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom in whose tranquility and silence there is the immeasurable. (COL, 1, 97.)

Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom; without self-knowledge, learning leads to ignorance, strife and sorrow. (COL, 2, 3.)

What is essential is self-knowledge, which brings about a still mind. (COL, 2, 239.)

The very conception that self-knowledge is difficult to acquire is a hindrance to self-knowledge. If I may suggest, do not suppose that it will be difficult, or that it will take time; do not predetermine what it is and what it is not. Begin. (COL, 1, 47.)

Self-Knowledge  Experience with self-knowledge leaves no residue

Without self-knowledge, experience breeds illusion; with self-knowledge, experience, which is the response to the challenge, does not leave a cumulative residue as memory. Self-knowledge is the discovery from moment to moment of the ways of the self, its intentions and pursuits, its thoughts and appetites. But many of us like to live in illusion, because there is great satisfaction in it; it is a private heaven which stimulates us and gives a feeling of superiority. (COL, 1, 93-4.)

Self-knowledge  Is awareness of responses to life

Self-knowledge comes into being through awareness of the moment-by-moment responses to the movement of life. (COL, 1, 79.)

Self-knowledge is to be discovered in the action of relationship. Self-knowledge does not come about through self-isolation, through withdrawal; the denial of relationship is death. Death is the ultimate resistance. Resistance, which is suppression, substitution or sublimation in any form, is a hindrance to the flow of self-knowledge; but resistance is to be discovered in relationship, in action. Resistance, whether negative or positive, with its comparisons and justifications, its condemnations and identifications, is the denial of what is. (COL, 1, 47.)

Self-Knowledge  Is awareness of ways of desire

Awareness of the ways of desire is self-knowledge. (COL, 2, 67.)

The desire to experience creates the experiencer, who then accumulates and remembers. Desire makes for the separation of the thinker from his thoughts; the desire to become, to experience, to be more or to be less, makes for division between the experiencer and the experience. Awareness of the ways of desire is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the beginning of meditation. (COL, 2, 66-7.)

Self-Knowledge  Brings understanding

Curiosity is not the way of understanding. Understanding comes with self-knowledge. (COL, 1, 15.)

Self-Knowledge  Comes into being with spontaneity

Without spontaneity, there can be no self-knowledge; without self-knowledge, the mind is shaped by passing influences. These passing influences can make the mind narrow or expansive, but it is still within the sphere of influence. What is put together can be unmade, and that which is not put together can be known only through self-knowledge. The self is put together, and it is only in undoing the self that that which is not the result of influence, which has not cause, can be known. (COL, 1, 135.)

Self-Knowledge  Comes into being with slowing down of mind, with passive awareness

Self-knowledge comes with the slowing down of the mind, but that doesn't mean forcing the mind to be slow. Compulsion only makes for resistance, and there must be no dissipation of energy in the slowing down of the mind. (COL, 2, 231.)

Simplicity is the alert, passive awareness in which the experiencer is not recording the experience. Self-analysis prevents this negative awareness; in analysis there is always a motive  to be free, to understand, to gain  and this desire only emphasizes self-consciousness. Likewise, introspective conclusions arrest self-knowledge. (COL, I, 80.)

Choiceless awareness of the manner of your approach will bring right relationship with the problem. The problem is self-created, so there must be self-knowledge. You and the problem are one, not two separate processes. You are the problem. (COL, 1, 99.)

Sensations  The desire from them is an escape from what is

There is a similarity in all stimulations: the desire to escape from what is, from our daily routine, from a relationship that is no longer alive, and from knowledge which is always becoming stale. You choose one kind of escape, I another, and my particular brand is always assumed to be more worth while than yours; but all escape, whether in the form of an ideal, the cinema, or the church, is harmful, leading to illusion and mischief. Psychological escapes are more harmful than the obvious ones, being more subtle and complex and therefore more difficult to discover. The silence that is brought about through stimulation, the silence that is made up through disciplines, controls, resistances, positive or negative, is a result, an effect, and so not creative; it is dead. (COL, 1, 120.)

Sensations  Are identified with separateness

Sensations are ... identified with separateness. (COL, I, 76.)

Sensations  Endlessly we seek them

We do not search out reality, but go after gratification and sensation. (COL, 1, 117.)

We live by sensations; we are sensations. Deprive us of sensations, pleasurable or painful, and we are not. (COL, 1, 76.)

Sensations are both pleasant and unpleasant, and the mind holds to the pleasant, thus becoming a slave to them. (COL, 1, 102.)

Sensation is always seeking further sensation, ever in wider and wider circles. There is no end to the pleasures of sensation; they multiply, but there is always dissatisfaction in their fulfillment; there is always the desire for more, and the demand for more is without end. (COL, 1, 239.)

Sensations  The constant desire for them gives rise to the experiencer, individuality, separateness  See also Desire

Sensations are ... identified with separateness. ... The constant desire to be more or less gives rise to the feeling of individuality and separateness. If we can remain with this fact without condemning or justifying it, we will discover that sensations do not make up our whole life. Then the mind as memory, which is sensation, becomes calm, no longer torn by its own conflicts; and only then, when the mind is silent and tranquil, is there the possibility of living without the "me" and the "mine." Without this love, collective action is merely compulsion, breeding antagonism and fear, from which arise private and social conflicts. (COL, 1, 76.)

The desire to experience creates the experiencer, who then accumulates and remembers. Desire makes for the separation of the thinker from his thoughts; the desire to become, to experience, to be more or to be less, makes for division between the experiencer and the experience. (COL, 2, 66-7.)

The moment of experiencing is totally different from the pursuit of sensation. In experiencing there is no awareness of the experiencer and his sensations. When experiencing comes to an end, then begin the sensations of the experiencer; and it is these sensations that the experiencer demands and pursues. ... Sensations become all-dominant, and not experiencing. The longing to repeat an experience is the demand for sensation; and while sensations can be repeated, experiencing cannot. (COL1, 64.)

Sensations  The desire for them gives rise to a mind that is never quiet

The more externalized we are, the more sensations and distractions there must be, and this gives rise to a mind that is never quiet, that is not capable of deep search and discovery. (COL, 1, 14.)

Sensations  The desire for them creates conflict

Conflict is inherent in sensation. As long as I want to be powerful or humble, there must be the conflicts of sensation, which bring about private and social misery. (COL, 1, 76.)

Desire ... causes conflict. Desire is stimulated by association and remembrance; memory is part of desire. The recollection of the pleasant and the unpleasant nourishes desire and breaks it up into opposing and conflicting desires. The mind identifies itself with the pleasant as opposed to the unpleasant; through the choice of pain and pleasure the mind separates desire, dividing it into different categories of pursuits and values. (COL, 2, 119.)

Sensations  They can never be new

Experiencing is not a continuity; for what has continuity is sensation, at whatever level. The repetition of sensation gives the appearance of a fresh experience, but sensations can never be new. The search of the new does not lie in repetitive sensations. The new comes into being only when there is experiencing; and experiencing is possible only when the urge and the pursuit of sensation have ceased. (COL, 1, 62.)

It is because this unvarying emptiness is filled or covered over with sensations that there is the everlasting fear of what is, of what we are. Sensations have a beginning and an end, they can be repeated and expanded; but experiencing is not within the limits of time. What is essential is experiencing, which is denied in the pursuit of sensation. Sensations are limited, personal, they cause conflict and misery; but experiencing, which is wholly different from the repetition of an experience, is without continuity. Only in experiencing is there renewal, transformation. (COL, 1, 65.)

Sensations  Line and form become important to the sensate

Line and form become extraordinarily important to those who are in bondage to the sensate; then beauty is sensation, goodness a feeling, and truth a matter of intellection. When sensations dominate, comfort becomes essential, not only to the body, but also to the psyche; and comfort, especially that of the mind, is corroding, leading to illusion. (COL, 1, 113.)

Sensations - Truth comes into being when desire for sensations ends

The actual, the what is, cannot be understood through mere sensation. The senses play a limited part, but understanding or experiencing lies beyond and above the senses. (COL, 1, 62.)

The constant desire to be more or less gives rise to the feeling of individuality and separateness. If we can remain with this fact without condemning or justifying it, we will discover that sensations do not make up our whole life. Then the mind as memory, which is sensation, becomes calm, no longer torn by its own conflicts; and only then, when the mind is silent and tranquil, is there the possibility of living without the "me" and the "mine." Without this love, collective action is merely compulsion, breeding antagonism and fear, from which arise private and social conflicts. (COL1, 76.)

Truth comes into being when gratification, the desire for sensation, comes to an end. (COL, 1, 117.)

Separateness, Individuality

You are separate from me, and I from another, and that is a fact; but why do we give importance to this feeling of separateness, and all its mischievous results? Though there is a great similarity between us all, yet we are dissimilar; and this dissimilarity gives each one the sense of importance in being separate: the separate family, name, property, and the feeling of being a separate entity. This separateness, this sense of individuality has caused enormous harm. (COL, 1, 76.)

Silence, Stillness

To understand what is, the mind must be silent. (COL, 2, 41.)

The mind is never quiet if it is always acquiring and calculating; and must not the mind be still for truth to be? (COL, 2, 125.)

For most people, a quiet mind is a rather fearsome thing; they are afraid to be quiet, for heaven knows what they may discover in themselves and worry is a preventative. A mind that is afraid to discover must ever be on the defensive, and restlessness is its defence. (COL, 1, 14.)

Thought or desire now seeks safety in silence, and so it asks for a method or a system which offers what it wants. In place of worldly things it now craves the pleasure of silence, so it breeds conflict between what is and what should be. There is no silence where there is conflict, repression, resistance. (COL, 2, 197.)

Thought can only deny or assert, it cannot discover or search out the new. Thought cannot come upon the new; but when thought is silent, then there may be the new. (COL, 1, 44.)

The deliberate cultivation of silence is as the enjoyment of some longed-for pleasure; the desire to silence the mind is but the pursuit of sensation. Such silence is only a form of resistance, an isolation which leads to decay. Silence that is bought is a thing of the market in which there is the noise of activity. Silence comes with the absence of desire. (COL, 2, 77.)

As the pool is still when the breezes stop, so the mind is still with the cessation of problems. But the mind cannot be made still; if it is, it is dead, it is a stagnant pool. When this is clear, then the maker of problems can be observed. The observation must be silent and not according to any predetermined plan based on pleasure and pain. (COL, 1, 122.)

There is a silence which is not a reaction, a result; a silence which is not the outcome of stimulation, of sensation, a silence which is not put together, not a conclusion. It comes into being when the process of thought is understood. (COL, 1, 120.)

What is essential is self-knowledge, which brings about a still mind. (COL, 2, 239.)

Self-knowledge comes with the slowing down of the mind, but that doesn't mean forcing the mind to be slow. Compulsion only makes for resistance, and there must be no dissipation of energy in the slowing down of the mind. (COL, 2, 231.)

As long as there is an actor, there will be division. The fusion takes place only when the mind is utterly still without trying to be still. There is this stillness, not when the thinker comes to an end, but only when thought itself has come to an end. (COL, 2, 67.)

The upper and the deeper mind are not dissimilar; they are both made up of conclusions, memories, they are both the outcome of the past. They can supply an answer, a conclusion, but they are incapable of dissolving the problem. The problem is dissolved only when both the upper and the deeper mind are silent, when they are not projecting positive or negative conclusions. There is freedom from the problem only when the whole mind is utterly still, choicelessly aware of the problem; for only then the maker of the problem is not. (COL, 1, 137.)

You must be completely denuded, without the weight of the past or the enticement of a hopeful future -- which does not mean despair. If you are in despair, there is not emptiness, no nakedness. You cannot 'do' anything. You can and must be still, without any hope, longing, or desire; but you cannot determine to be still, suppressing all noise, for in that very effort there is noise. Silence is not the opposite of noise. (COL, 2, 115.)

All activities of conformity and denial, of analysis and acceptance, ... strengthen the experiencer. The experiencer can never understand the whole. The experiencer is the accumulated, and there is no understanding within the shadow of the past. ... Understanding is not of the mind, of thought.... In the awareness of this whole process there is a silence which is not of the experiencer. In this silence only does understanding come into being. (COL, 1, 38.)

Any movement of the mind is time-binding; it prevents creation. The timeless is not with the time-binding quality of memory. The limitless is not to be measured by memory, but experience. There is the unnamable only when experience, knowledge, has wholly ceased. Truth alone frees the mind from its own bondage. (COL, 2, 108.)

There is this stillness, not when the thinker comes to an end, but only when thought itself has come to an end. (COL, 2, 67.)

The mind had no recollection of previous stillnesses, of those silences it had known; it did not say, "This is tranquillity." There was no verbalization, which is only the recognition and the affirmation of a somewhat similar experience. Because there was no verbalization, thought was absent. There was no recording, and therefore thought was not able to pick up the silence or to think about it; for the word "stillness" is not stillness. When the word is not, the mind cannot operate, and so the experiencer cannot store up as a means of further pleasure. There was no gathering process at work, nor was there approximation or assimilation. The movement of the mind was totally absent. (COL, 1, 57.)

If this silence were an illusion the mind would have had some relationship to it, it would either reject it or cling to it, reason it away or with subtle satisfaction identify itself with it; but since it has no relationship to this silence, the mind cannot accept or deny it. The mind can operate only with its own projections, with the things which are of itself; but it has no relationship with the things that are not of its own origin. The silence is not of the mind, and so the mind cannot cultivate or become identified with it. The content of this silence is not to be measured by words. (COL, 1, 58.)

The car stopped at the house. The barking of the dog, the unpacking of the car and the general disturbance in no way affected this extraordinary silence. There was no disturbance. The wind was among the pines, the shadows were long, and a wildcat sneaked away among the bushes. In this silence there was movement, and the movement was not a distraction. There was no fixed attention from which to be distracted. There is distraction when the main interest shifts; but in this silence there was absence of interest, and so there was no wandering away. Movement was not far away from the silence but was of it. It was the stillness, not of death, of decay, but of life in which there was a total absence of conflict. (COL, 1, 58.)

Simplicity

Simplicity is the alert, passive awareness in which the experiencer is not recording the experience. (COL, I, 80.)

The will to be is the very antithesis of simplicity. Simplicity comes into being with freedom from the acquisitive drive of the desire to achieve. Achievement is identification, and identification is will. (COL, 1, 80.)

Spontaneity  Is not discipline

The mind is not quiet when it is disciplined, controlled and checked; such a mind is a dead mind, it is isolating itself through various forms of resistance, and it inevitably creates misery for itself and others. (COL, 2, 32.)

It is fear that creates the resistance called discipline; but the spontaneous discovery of fear is freedom from fear. Conformity to a pattern, at whatever level, is fear, which only breeds conflict, confusion and antagonism; but a mind that is in revolt is not fearless, for the opposite can never know the spontaneous, the free. (COL, 1, 135.)

Disciplines are mere impositions and so can never be the means of denudation. Through self-discipline the mind can strengthen itself in its purpose; but this purpose is self-projected and so it is not the real. The mind creates reality in its own image, and disciplines merely give vitality to that image. (COL, 1, 68.)

Hesitancy is so essential to discovery, to further understanding; but how can there be hesitancy when you know so much, when the self-protective armour is so highly polished and all the cracks are sealed from within? (COL, 1, 113.)

Spontaneity  Is not pose

Each one cultivates a pose. There is the walk and the pose of a prosperous business man, the smile of one who has arrived; there is the look and the pose of an artist; there is the pose of a respectful disciple, and the pose of a disciplined ascetic. Like that self-conscious girl, the so-called religious man assumes a pose, the pose of self-discipline which he has sedulously cultivated through denials and sacrifices. She sacrifices spontaneity for effect, and he immolates himself to achieve an end. Both are concerned with a result, though at different levels; and while his result may be considered socially more beneficial than hers, fundamentally they are similar, one is not superior to the other. Both are unintelligent, for both indicate pettiness of mind. A petty mind is always petty; it cannot be made rich, abundant. Thoug such a mind may adoirn itself or seek to acquirte virtue, it remains what it is, a petty, shallow thing, and through so-called growth, experience, it can only be e riched in its pettiness. An ugly thing cannot be made beautiful. The god of a petty mind is a petty god. A shallow mind does not become fathomless by adorning itself with knowledge and clever phrases, by quoting words of wisdom, or by decorating its outward appearance. Adornments, whether inward or outward, do not make a fathomless mind; and it is this fathomlessness of the mind that gives beauty, not the jewel or the acquired virtue. For beauty to come into being, the mind must be choicelessly aware its own pettiness; there must be an awareness in which comparison has wholly ceased.

The cultivated pose of the girl, and the disciplined pose of the so-called religious ascetic both deny spontaneity. (COL, 1, 133-4.)

Spontaneity  It alone reveals what is

Without spontaneity, there can be no self-knowledge; without self-knowledge, the mind is shaped by passing influences. These passing influences can make the mind narrow or expansive, but it is still within the sphere of influence. What is put together can be unmade, and that which is not put together can be known only through self-knowledge. The self is put together, and it is only in undoing the self that that which is not the result of influence, which has not cause, can be known. (COL, 1, 135.)

There must be spontaneity to uncover the movements of the self, at whatever level it may be placed. Though there may be unpleasant discoveries, the movements of the self must be exposed and understood; but disciplines destroy the spontaneity in which discoveries are made. Disciplines, however exacting, fix the mind in a pattern. The mind will adjust itself to that for which it has been trained; but that to which it adjusts itself is not the real. (COL, 1, 68.)

Spontaneity is the only key that opens the door to what is. The spontaneous response uncovers the mind as it is; but what is discovered is immediately adorned or destroyed, and so spontaneity is put an end to. The killing of spontaneity is the way of a petty mind, which then decorates the outer, at whatever level; and this decoration is the worship of itself. A disciplined mind cannot discover; it may function effectively and hence ruthlessly, but it cannot uncover the fathomless. (COL, 1, 134-5.)

When the whole consciousness is silent and tranquil, free from all becoming, which is spontaneity, then only does the immeasurable come into being. (COL, 1, 44.)

Stillness  See Silence, Stillness

Suppression, repression

To understand is arduous, especially for those who have been heavily conditioned from childhood. Although strenuous, repression becomes a matter of habit. Understanding can never be made into a habit, a matter of routine; it demands constant watchfulness, alertness. To understand, there must be pliability, sensitivity, a warmth that has nothing to do with sentimentality. Suppression in any form needs no quickening of awareness; it is the easiest and the stupidest way to deal with responses. Suppression is conformity to an idea, to a pattern, and it offers superficial security, respectability. Understanding is liberating, but suppression is always narrowing, self-enclosing. Fear of authority, of insecurity, of opinion, builds up an ideological refuge, with its physical counterpart, to which the mind turns. This refuge, at whatever level it may be placed, ever sustains fear; and from fear there is substitution, sublimation or discipline, which are all a form of repression. Repression must find an outlet, which may be a physical ailment or some kind of ideological illusion. The price is paid according to ones temperament and idiosyncrasies. (COL, 1, 124.)

It is not a question of time, of dredging into the past, or of careful analysis; it is a matter of seeing the truth of repression. By being passively aware, the truth of it is immediately seen. (COL, 1, 124-5.)

The will to be free from repression is a hindrance to understanding the truth of it; for will is desire, whether positive or negative, and with desire there can be no passive awareness. It is desire or craving that brought about the repression; and this same desire, though now called will, can never free itself from its own creation. Again, the truth of will must be perceived through passive yet alert awareness. (COL, 1, 125.)

Thought  Thought creates the thinker

Without thought there is no thinker. Thoughts create the thinker, who isolates himself to give himself permanency; for thoughts are always impermanent. (COL, 1, 69.)

Thought  Be purged of thought

How necessary it is for the mind to purge itself of all thought, to be constantly empty, not made empty, but simply empty; to die to all thought, to all of yesterdays memories, and to the coming hour! It is simple to die, and it is hard to continue; for continuity is effort to be or not to be. Effort is desire, and desire can die only when the mind ceases to acquire. How simple it is just to live! But it is not stagnation. There is great happiness in not wanting, in not being something, in not going somewhere. When the mind purges itself of all thought, only then is there the silence of creation. The mind is not tranquil as long as it is traveling in order to arrive. For the mind, to arrive is to succeed, and success is ever the same, whether at the beginning or at the end. There is no purgation of the mind if it is weaving the pattern of its own becoming. (COL, 2, 19-20.)

Thinking is the response of memory, of experience, of the past. This again must be perceived, not on the verbal level, but there must be an experi/encing of it. Then only is there passive watchfulness in which the thinker is not, an awareness in which thought is entirely absent. The mind, the totality of experience, the self-consciousness which is ever of the past, is quiet only when it is not projecting itself; and this projection is the desire to become.

The mind is empty only when thought is not. Thought cannot come to an end save through passive watchfulness of every thought. In this awareness there is no watcher and no censor; without the censor, there is only experiencing. In experiencing there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. The experienced is the thought, which gives birth to the thinker. Only when the mind is experiencing is there stillness, which is not made up, put together; and only in that tranquillity can the real come into being. Reality is not of time and is not measurable. (COL, 2, 26-7.)

The purgation of the mind is tranquillity of heart. (COL, 2, 23.)

Total Process, Totality

Man is a total process. The totality must be understood and not merely a part, however temporarily important the part may be. (COL, 1, 75.)

Ignorance of the ways of the self leads to illusion; and once caught in the net of illusion, it is extremely hard to break through it. It is difficult to recognize an illusion, for, having created it, the minds cannot be made still, for the maker himself is a product of the mind, of desire. There must be an awareness of this total process, a choiceless awareness; then only is there the possibility of not breeding illusion. (COL, 1, 82.)

Tranquillity  Is a state of understanding

Tranquillity is a state of understanding, and becoming denies this understanding. Becoming creates the sense of time, which is really the postponement of understanding. The "I shall be" is an illusion born of self-importance. (COL, 1, 22.)

Tranquillity  Through self-knowledge

Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom in whose tranquility and silence there is the immeasurable. (COL, 1, 97.)

Tranquillity  Through the purgation of the mind

The purgation of the mind is tranquillity of heart. (COL, 2, 23.)

When the mind purges itself of all thought, only then is there the silence of creation. The mind is not tranquil as long as it is traveling in order to arrive. For the mind, to arrive is to succeed, and success is ever the same, whether at the beginning or at the end. There is no purgation of the mind if it is weaving the pattern of its own becoming. (COL, 2, 19-20.)

The mind had no recollection of previous stillnesses, of those silences it had known; it did not say, "This is tranquillity." There was no verbalization, which is only the recognition and the affirmation of a somewhat similar experience. Because there was no verbalization, thought was absent. There was no recording, and therefore thought was not able to pick up the silence or to think about it; for the word "stillness" is not stillness. When the word is not, the mind cannot operate, and so the experiencer cannot store up as a means of further pleasure. There was no gathering process at work, nor was there approximation or assimilation. The movement of the mind was totally absent. (COL, 1, 57.)

Tranquillity  Through discovery and experiencing

When there is the discovery, the experiencing of this nothingness as you, then fear  which exists only when the thinker is separate from his thoughts and so tries to establish a relationship with them  completely drops away. Only then is it possible for the mind to be still; and in this tranquility, truth comes into being. (COL, 1, 92.)

Only when the mind is experiencing is there stillness, which is not made up, put together; and only in that tranquillity can the real come into being. Reality is not of time and is not measurable. (COL, 2, 26-7.)

Tranquillity  Through freedom from becoming

A mind burdened with becoming can never be tranquil, for tranquillity is not a result either of practice or of time. Tranquillity is a state of understanding, and becoming denies this understanding. Becoming creates the sense of time, which is really the postponement of understanding. The "I shall be" is an illusion born of self-importance. (COL, 1, 22.)

When the whole consciousness is silent and tranquil, free from all becoming, which is spontaneity, then only does the immeasurable come into being. (COL, 1, 44.)

Virtue is the tranquillity of freedom from the craving to be. (COL, 1, 34.)

Tranquillity  Through freedom from desire for sensation

Sensations are ... identified with separateness. ... The constant desire to be more or less gives rise to the feeling of individuality and separateness. If we can remain with this fact without condemning or justifying it, we will discover that sensations do not make up our whole life. Then the mind as memory, which is sensation, becomes calm, no longer torn by its own conflicts; and only then, when the mind is silent and tranquil, is there the possibility of living without the "me" and the "mine." Without this love, collective action is merely compulsion, breeding antagonism and fear, from which arise private and social conflicts. (COL, 1, 76.)

Tranquillity  Through freedom from problems

Without freedom from problems, there cam be no tranquility; and tranquility is essential for happiness, which is not an end in itself. As the pool is still when the breezes stop, so the mind is still with the cessation of problems. But the mind cannot be made still; if it is, it is dead, it is a stagnant pool. When this is clear, then the maker of problems can be observed. The observation must be silent and not according to any predetermined plan based on pleasure and pain. (COL, 1, 122.)

Truth  Its nature and ways

To see the false as the false, to the see the true in the false, and to see the true as the true -- it is this that sets the mind free. (COL, 3, 4.)

Truth alone frees the mind from its own bondage. (COL, 2, 108.)

Truth is the understanding of what is from moment to moment without the burden or the residue of the past moment. (COL, 1, 20.)

Truth is not to be comprehended through the passage of time. Truth is not a thing to be attained; it is seen or it is not seen, it cannot be perceived gradually. (COL, 1, 125.)

As long as there is the experiencer remembering the experience, truth is not. Truth is not something to be remembered, stored up, recorded, and then brought out. What is accumulated is not truth. (COL, 2, 66.)

Truth is outside of all patterns, fears and hopes. If you would discover the supreme happiness of truth, you must break away from all ceremonies and ideological patterns. (COL, 1, 24.)

Truth is not an end, a result, a goal; it cannot be invited, for it is not a thing of the mind. (COL, 1, 25.)

Truth is not to be conquered; you cannot storm it; it will slip through your hands if you try to grasp it. Truth comes silently, without your knowing. What you know is not truth, it is only an idea, a symbol. That shadow is not the real. (COL, 2, 56.)

The highest cannot be attained; there is no path, no mathematically progressive growth to it. Truth must come, you cannot go to truth, and your cultivated virtue will not carry you to it. What you attain is not truth, but your own self-projected desire; and in truth alone is there happiness. (COL, 1, 324.)

Truth must be discovered anew from moment to moment, it is not an experience that can be repeated; it has no continuity, it is a timeless state. The division between the many and the one must cease for truth to be. It is not a state to be achieved, nor a point towards which the mind can evolve, grow. If truth is conceived as a thing to be gained, then the cultivation of knowledge and the accumulation of memory become necessary, giving rise to the guru and the follower, the one who knows and the one who does not know. (COL, 3, 4.)

To understand what is, the mind must be silent. (COL, 2, 41.)

To understand what is needs swift awareness, for what is is not static. (COL, 1, 14.)

What is can be understood only with the fading of tomorrow. The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation that is of supreme importance. (COL, 1, 52.)

Repetition of a truth is a lie. Truth cannot be repeated, it cannot be propagated or used. That which can be used and repeated has no life in itself, it is mechanical, static. A dead thing can be used, but not truth. You may kill and deny truth first, and then use it; but it is no longer truth. The propagandists are not concerned with experiencing; they are concerned with the organization of sensation, religious or political, social or private. The propagandist, religious or secular, cannot be a speaker of truth. (COL, 1, 63.)

Truth  Is a pathless land

There is no path to wisdom. If there is a path, then wisdom is the formulated, it is already imagined, known. Can wisdom be known or cultivated? Is it a thing to be learnt, to be accumulated? If it is, then it becomes mere knowledge, a thing of experience and of the books. Experience and knowledge are the continuous chain of responses and so can never comprehend the new, the fresh, the uncreated. Experience and knowledge, being continuous, make a path to their own self-projections, and hence they are constantly binding. Wisdom is the understanding of what is from moment to moment, without the accumulation of experience and knowledge. What is accumulated does not give freedom to understand, and without freedom there is no discovery; and it is this endless discovery that makes for wisdom. Wisdom is ever new, ever fresh, and there is no means of gathering it. The means destroys the freshness, the newness, the spontaneous discovery. (COL, 1, 96.)

There is no path to truth. Trust must be discovered, but there is no formula for its discovery. What is formulated is not true. You must set out on the uncharted sea, and the uncharted sea is yourself. You must set out to discover yourself, but not according to any plan or pattern, for then there is no discovery. Discovery brings joy  not the remembered, comparative joy, but joy that is ever new. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom in whose tranquility and silence there is the immeasurable. (COL, 1, 97.)

Truth  What is is not static  See What is

Truth  It alone frees  See also Freedom

The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation that is of supreme importance. (COL, 1, 52.)

Truth alone liberates, and not your desire to be free. The very desire and effort to be free is a hindrance to liberation. (COL, 2, 104.)

Again, the truth of this must be seen. It is truth that liberates, not will and effort. (COL, 1, 125.)

The truth frees; you cannot do anything about it. Your very action to stop escaping is another escape. The highest state of inaction is the action of truth. (Krishnamurti, COL, 2, 37.)

The truth of what is is its own action. (COL, 2, 44.)

It would be a better world if each one of us were aware of true inaction, which is not the opposite of action. But that is another matter. (COL, 2, 99.)

Understanding  Its nature
and ways

The understanding of yourself, however painful or passingly pleasurable, is the beginning of wisdom. (COL, 1, 96-7.)

Wisdom is the understanding of what is from moment to moment, without the accumulation of experience and knowledge. What is accumulated does not give freedom to understand, and without freedom there is no discovery; and it is this endless discovery that makes for wisdom. Wisdom is ever new, ever fresh, and there is no means of gathering it. The means destroys the freshness, the newness, the spontaneous discovery. (COL, 1, 96.)

All activities of conformity and denial, of analysis and acceptance, only strengthen the experiencer. The experiencer can never understand the whole. The experiencer is the accumulated, and there is no understanding within the shadow of the past. ... Understanding is not of the mind, of thought.... In the awareness of this whole process there is a silence which is not of the experiencer. In this silence only does understanding come into being. (COL, 1, 38.)

The positive or negative action of will, which is desire sharpened and heightened, always leads to strife and conflict; it is not the means of understanding. (COL, 1, 67.)

To be ignorant is not to be free of knowledge. Ignorance is the lack of self-awareness; and knowledge is ignorance when there is no understanding of the ways of the self. Understanding of the self is freedom from knowledge. (COL, 1, 26.)

To understand conflict, thought must not interfere; there must be an awareness of conflict without the thinker. The thinker is the chooser who invariably takes sides with the pleasant, the gratifying, and thereby sustains conflict; he may get rid of one particular conflict, but the soil is there for further conflict. The thinker justifies or condemns, and so prevents understanding. With the thinker absent, there is the direct experiencing of conflict, but not as an experience which the experiencer is undergoing. In the state of experiencing there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. Experiencing is direct, and not through memory. It is this direct relationship that brings understanding. Understanding brings freedom from conflict; and with freedom from conflict there is integration. (COL, 1, 109.)

In facing what is, we can do something about it; but to take flight from what is inevitably makes us stupid and dull, slaves to sensation and confusion. (COL, 1, 64.)

Understanding  What is must be understood

The actual, the what is, must be understood and not smothered by determinations, ideals and clever rationalizations. (COL, 2, 56.)

The understanding of what is does not depend upon thought, for thought itself is an escape. To think about the problem is not to understand it. It is only when the mind is silent that the truth of what is unfolds. (COL, 2, 41.)

To understand what is, the mind must be silent. (COL, 2, 41.)

The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation that is of supreme importance. (COL, 1, 52.)

Understanding  The mind cannot understand

Mind cannot understand; it may translate what is understood into action, but it is not capable of understanding. To understand, there must be the warmth of recognition and reception, which only the heart can give when the mind is silent. (COL, 1, 34.)

Understanding is not of the mind, of thought.... In the awareness of this whole process there is a silence which is not of the experiencer. In this silence only does understanding come into being. (COL, 1, 38.)

Understanding is not verbal, it is not a mental process, and therefore not a matter of experience. (COL, 1, 109.)

We can understand a fact only when we do not use another fact in the same field as a medium of understanding, which merely creates conflict and confusion. (COL, 1, 132.)

Understanding  The senses play only a limited role

The actual, the what is, cannot be understood through mere sensation. The senses play a limited part, but understanding or experiencing lies beyond and above the senses. (COL, 1, 62.)

Understanding  Comes with self-knowledge

Curiosity is not the way of understanding. Understanding comes with self-knowledge. (COL, 1, 15.)

Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom; without self-knowledge, learning leads to ignorance, strife and sorrow. (COL, 2, 3.)

To understand is arduous, especially for those who have been heavily conditioned from childhood. Although strenuous, repression becomes a matter of habit. Understanding can never be made into a habit, a matter of routine; it demands constant watchfulness, alertness. To understand, there must be pliability, sensitivity, a warmth that has nothing to do with sentimentality. Suppression in any form needs no quickening of awareness; it is the easiest and the stupidest way to deal with responses. Suppression is conformity to an idea, to a pattern, and it offers superficial security, respectability. Understanding is liberating, but suppression is always narrowing, self-enclosing. Fear of authority, of insecurity, of opinion, builds up an ideological refuge, with its physical counterpart, to which the mind turns. This refuge, at whatever level it may be placed, ever sustains fear; and from fear there is substitution, sublimation or discipline, which are all a form of repression. Repression must find an outlet, which may be a physical ailment or some kind of ideological illusion. The price is paid according to ones temperament and idiosyncrasies. (COL, 1, 124.)

Understanding  Requires swift awareness

Merely to be silent does not indicate a tranquil mind. Tranquillity does not come into being with abstinence or denial; it comes with the understanding of what is. To understand what is needs swift awareness, for what is is not static. (COL, 1, 14.)

To understand what is, there must be freedom from all distraction. Distraction is the condemnation or justification of what is. Distraction is comparison; it is resistance or discipline against the actual. Distraction is the very effort or compulsion to understand. All distractions are a hindrance to the swift pursuit of what is. What is is not static; it is in constant movement, and to follow it the mind must not be tethered to any belief, to any hope of success or fear of failure. Only in passive yet alert awareness can that which is unfold. This unfoldment is not of time. (COL, 1, 127.)

Understanding  Brings freedom  See also Freedom

When there is understanding there is freedom, which cannot be bought, or given by another. What is bought can be lost, and what is given can be taken away. (COL, 1, 67.)

The Unknown

Knowledge is a flash of light between two darknesses; but knowledge cannot go above and beyond that darkness. Knowledge is essential to technique, as coal is to the engine; but it cannot reach out into the unknown. The unknown is not to be caught in the web of the known. Knowledge must be set aside for the unknown to be; but how difficult that is! (COL, 1, 26.)

Fear exists only in the relationship between the known and the unknown. The known is ever trying to capture the unknown; but it can capture only that which is already known. The unknown can never be experienced by the known; the known, the experienced must cease for the unknown to be. (COL, 1, 89.)

The mind moves from the known to the known, and it cannot reach into the unknown. You cannot think of something you do not know; it is impossible. What you think about comes out of the known, the past, whether the past be remote, or the second that has just gone by. (COL, 1, 43.)

Thought can only deny or assert, it cannot discover or search out the new. Thought cannot come upon the new; but when thought is silent, then there may be the new. (COL, 1, 44.)

Thought cannot penetrate into the unknown, and so it can never discover or experience reality. (COL, 1, 44.)

There cannot be the experiencing of the unknown until the mind ceases to experience. Thought is the expression of experience; thought is a response of memory; and as long as thinking intervenes, there can be no experiencing. (COL, 1, 32.)

The mind is aware that it cannot capture by experience and word that which ever abides, timeless and immeasurable. (COL, 2, 242.)

Virtue - Is the tranquility of freedom from the craving to be

Virtue is not conflict and achievement, prolonged practice and result, but a state of being which is not the outcome of self-projected desire. There is no being if there is a struggle to be. (COL, 1, 34.)

Virtue is the tranquillity of freedom from the craving to be. (COL, 1. 34.)

In comprehending the process of the mind, which is the self, virtue comes into being. Virtue is not accumulated resistance. It is the spontaneous awareness and the understanding of what is. (COL, 1, 34.)

What is

To understand what is, the mind must be silent. (COL, 2, 41.)

The what is is that which is from moment to moment. The understanding of what is does not depend upon thought, for thought itself is an escape. To think about the problem is not to understand it. It is only when the mind is silent that the truth of what is unfolds. (COL, 2, 41.)

To understand what is needs swift awareness, for what is is not static. (COL, 1, 14.)

What is can be understood only with the fading of tomorrow. The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation that is of supreme importance. (COL, 1, 52.)

In facing what is, we can do something about it; but to take flight from what is inevitably makes us stupid and dull, slaves to sensation and confusion. (COL, 1, 64.)

Will  Is desire  See also Choicelessness

The positive or negative action of will, which is desire sharpened and heightened, always leads to strife and conflict; it is not the means of understanding. (COL, 1, 67.)

The will to be free from repression is a hindrance to understanding the truth of it; for will is desire, whether positive or negative, and with desire there can be no passive awareness. It is desire or craving that brought about the repression; and this same desire, though now called will, can never free itself from its own creation. Again, the truth of will must be perceived through passive yet alert awareness. (COL, 1, 125.)

Will cannot uncover the ways of the self. Self-knowledge is not the product of will; self-knowledge comes into being through awareness of the moment-by-moment responses to the movement of life. Will shuts off these spontaneous responses, which alone reveal the structure of the self. Will is the very essence of desire; and to the understanding of desire, will becomes a hindrance. Will in any form, whether or the upper mind or of the deep-rooted desires, can never be passive; and it is only in passivity, in alert silence, that truth can be. (COL, I, 79-80.)

Words  They cannot capture reality

Reality is not to be spoken of; and when it is, it is no longer reality. (COL, 1, 45.)

Words exist to communicate, and also to remember, to fix in the mind a fleeting experience, a thought, a feeling; so the mind itself is the word, the experience, it is the memory of the fact in terms of pleasure and pain, good and bad. This whole process takes place within the field of time, the field of the known; and any revolution within that field is not revolution at all, but only a modification of what has been. (COL, 3, 87.)